Thursday, July 6th - Surprise, Surprise Nest #04

The Thursday Volunteers made a valiant attempt to check the nests this morning, but due to the heavy rain and the beach and the beach access road were flooded they turned back - safety first!  They did not get to check the whole island and nests this morning.  Bill called me around 10:30 to see if I would go out with him to check on the nests.  Of course, I agreed with his plan of action.

I met him at the shed and away we went.  Both of us felt that if a turtle had come in, the tracks would be gone due to the heavy rain showers - we were wrong.  If you have ridden with Bill you know we stopped to pick up trash, we actually picked up a good bit - mostly food wrappers and plastic bags.

When we got to Nest #1, I headed up to check on Nest #01, Bill was in the surf zone.  We both yelled to each other, Bill had seen the tracks, and I had spotted the body pit which was located very close to Nest #01.

Bill's view looking toward the dunes

 

You can see the DNR sign for Nest #01 - to the left

The white trash bag I dropped when I spotted the body pit

Tracks very faint

My view looking from the dunes down to surf zone

Body Pit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She is close as you can get to the dune

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She crawled right up to the base of the dune and laid her nest.  Due to the heavy rains, some of the things we look for were not visible, such as thrown sand.  The crescent shaped sand was there, and we could see where her flipper had made an indention on the dune wall.    We probed the crescent sand first, and we did hit some soft sand, but no eggs.  We knew there was hard sand on the outside of her body pit, and Bill probed just a little off where we found soft sand and he found the nest chamber.  The chamber was about 10 inches deep, and it slopes toward the dune, does not go straight down.  Her crawl width was 33 inches.  I measured several places for the width since we did not have really clear tracks.  

One for the books . . . 

Bill's diligence and we have Nest #04

It was hot, hot, working this nest

 

 

 

Text by Leslie, Pictures by Leslie & Bill

Waties Island performs research and management activities regarding sea turtle conservation in accordance under SCDNR Permit Number: MTP500.