This past week was a week of informative and inspiring turtles talks! I had the opportunity to attend the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network (WIDECAST) conference and then attended the International Sea Turtle Symposium (ISTS). It was a week filled with new sea turtle research and initiatives being done around the world.

The ISTS was held virtually from Australia. Next year it is hopefully to be held in-person again in Cartagena, Colombia. It was nice to still be able to connect virtually but a trip to Cartagena next year sounds appealing! I think travelling is on everyone's mind now that things are starting to feel normal again.

I am feeling very inspired and motivated as we get closer and closer to the beginning of our nesting season!

Hello fellow turtle enthusiasts and blog readers!

I am excited to share that I am back for the 2022 nesting season at Edisto Beach State Park. This will be my 7th year leading the program as the Sea Turtle Specialist and my 10th year since my first sea turtle internship (which was here at the park!). I am looking forward to getting things organized for the upcoming nesting season. Will it be another record year? Here's hoping!

Over the next month, I will be sorting supplies, working on new projects, prepping for our upcoming nest adoptions, attending sea turtle conferences, installing shorebird fencing and so much more! It will be a busy month and then May will be here before we know it. We are looking forward to interviewing and hiring our summer interns. Stay tuned to the blog to follow along for our 2022 sea turtle nesting season!

​If you are reading this, it means you have seen one of the labelled posts on Edisto Beach State Park! Thanks for scanning the QR code to learn more about it! This post is used as a marker for one of the buried temperature data loggers. Prior to the start of the 2022 Loggerhead (Caretta caretta) sea turtle nesting season, we installed sand temperature loggers in randomized locations along our 1.5-mile stretch of beach. We chose locations just above the Spring high tide line and locations closer to the dunes, where sea turtle nesting is most likely to occur. These temperature loggers will provide helpful insight into the temperatures that the incubating loggerhead sea turtle eggs will experience this season.
 
Why is sand temperature important? Sea turtles, like most reptiles, have temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). It has been determined that the warmer the sand during incubation, the more likely female hatchlings will be produced and the cooler the sand during incubation, the more likely male hatchlings will be produced. This pivotal temperature is approximately 29 degrees Celsius (84.2 degrees Fahrenheit) (Mrosovsky 1988). The most influential temperature on the sex determination process occurs during the middle third of incubation (Ackerman 1997). Loggerhead sea turtle incubation times can range from 45-70 days. The temperature the eggs experience during incubation will also influence developmental times, hatchling fitness and hatching and emergence success (Fisher et al. 2014).
 
There are many other factors aside from sand temperature that can influence sea turtle hatchlings. Accumulated precipitation and humidity are considered to be the other climatic forces on the hatchling success (Montero et al. 2018). Although the temperature readings alone will not give a complete representation, beginning the collection of this data may assist future and greater-scale research projects in the state of South Carolina.