Abnormal Eggs

Blog Post By: Sarah Glover, Sea Turtle Intern

During dawn patrol on June 8th, we found a loggerhead nest that needed to be relocated. This turtle could not quite make it up the steep scarp, so we decided to move her to a safer location down the beach. As we were removing the eggs from the original chamber, we discovered something rare. Several eggs in this clutch were not the typical ping-pong ball shape of most loggerhead sea turtle eggs. Instead, they were more oblong and contained multiple yolks. Some looked like one big, oval egg, while others looked like several eggs fused together. There were also several broken eggs within the nest, one of which was used as our sample for the DNA study we are a part of.

​Believe it or not, the misshaped eggs found in this nest may still be viable. In multi-yolk eggs, the closer the yolks are together, the more likely it is that the egg will hatch. However, since we do not know how constricted the yolks are, we will not know whether or not these eggs were viable until we conduct an inventory on the nest. Inventories take place after a nest has hatched, which is 45-60 days after the eggs are laid. We will post an update on these eggs after the inventory, so stay tuned!