Waties Island Sea Turtles

Waties Island, the northernmost barrier island in South Carolina is roughly 4.0 km in length. It is a private undeveloped barrier island at the border of North/South Carolina. All sea turtle monitoring by this group is authorized by the SCDNR Marine Turtle Conservation Program under Permit MTP500. We strive to help protect the sea turtle, and we are at it again this season! The site will be updated often during the nesting season - May 1st through October.

Friday, July 29, 2022

Friday July 29 Inventory of Nest 3

Nest 3 emerged on Tuesday, July 26, day 57 of incubation and today we inventoried the contents of the nest. This nesting mother has made Waties her go to spot. She started laying nests in 2012 with 4 nests, then 5 nests in 2014, and 4 nests in 2016. In 2020, she only laid two nests. Waties is her place, and we hope this is the first of several nests. Today's nest held 119 eggs. 84 hatched, 35 total unhatched (todays find plus 1 for research and 2 lost to crabs) and 13 live hatchlings released. 70.5% hatch success

The digging begins. And the sorting
of the shells, hatched and unhatched

We had 84 hatched and 30 unhatched eggs

Plus these two pipped eggs-hatchlings not
quite ready to leave the egg. We reburied
these guys.

And best of all, we had 13 lively hatchlings
that were ready to start their journey!!

This never gets old

Keela and Jingle found this buoy up near the jetty!!

We had a good day!!

Post by Paulette

Pictures by Paulette, Valerie, Melissa

and Leslie

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