We had a beautiful walk to the inlet and back but we had yet to see a turtle. Right in front of the white office building, where we started the walk, was a turtle egg chambering. We waited until she was laying her eggs and then got a closer look. We got to see her lay her eggs, cover and then return to the ocean. 

The next morning our patrol marked this nest as 249 on the state park beach. See the pictures below of the body pit, egg sample and marked nest. If you would like to adopt this nest, click on the button below. The unique ID to adopt the nest is: 258075. Part of the proceeds from the nest adoption comes back to our turtle program.

Our record for the most amount of nests found in a season was set in 2016 with 240 nests! We broke the record of 240 before June was done! On Saturday we found 12 new nests bringing our total to 248 on the state park beach. We are so excited to see how many nests we end up with once the turtles have finished nesting.

We had a wonderful night walk on Thursday as we got to witness a nesting loggerhead sea turtle under a starry sky and with a wonderful breeze to keep the bugs at bay. We got the chance to witness her laying her eggs, cover her nest and return to the ocean. The following morning myself and our volunteer, Nona, had a busy start to our day! We found 11 new nests on the state park beach, bringing our total to 235! We are nearing closer to our record of 240, will we beat it tomorrow? Tune back in to the blog to find out when we pass our record number of nests.

The turtle we saw last night, laid nest 229 on our state park beach. See below for pictures taken during morning patrol. If you would like to adopt this nest, click on the button below to be taken to the adoption page. The unique ID for nest 229 is: 256981. Part of the proceeds from the nest adoption goes back to our program! The turtles and our patrol group thank you for the support.

We had a beautiful night to walk the beach in search of a nesting loggerhead sea turtle. We had a clear sky and a lot of bioluminescence glowing at the waterline. Unfortunately, we did not get to witness a turtle on our walk. The following morning they only found one new nest and two false crawls, so the odds were against us in seeing one. The nest they found marks nest 221 on the state park beach. If you would like to adopt this nest, click on the button below to be taken to the adoption page. The unique ID for this nest is: 255938.

Part of the proceeds from the nest adoption goes back to our turtle program. See below for pictures taken from the morning patrol by our volunteer, Lea. 

​Thanks for your support for our night walk program and nest adoptions!

We had an amazing night walk on Thursday! We only had to walk a short distance until seeing a turtle lay eggs, cover and return to the ocean. However, this turtle was nesting in the campground beach access! We made sure to rope it off that night to avoid anyone walking over the body pit before we marked it off in the morning.

Our turtle was a smaller-sized loggerhead so perhaps she was a newer nesting turtle. When she started to cover her nest we noticed she was glowing! She had some bioluminescence on her shell that glowed every time she threw sand. It was a beautiful sight to see!

This turtle laid nest 194 on our Edisto Beach State Park. I included more pictures from the morning patrol. If you would like to adopt the nest, click on the button below to be taken to the adoption page. The Unique ID for the nest is: 253447

We were very happy to reach 200 nests this morning! Only 41 more nests to break the record, let's go turtles!

We walked to the inlet under an almost full moon! There was a breeze keeping the bugs at bay and we had turtle tracks to see. We came across a couple new nests and false crawls but no turtle until our trek on the way back. We saw this turtle make her slow crawl back to the ocean after crawling ashore without nesting. She was missing part of her back flipper, so I am sure she will have a tough time trying to dig an egg chamber. However, these turtles are pretty tough so I am sure she will find a way!

The next morning our intern, Chloe, and our volunteers, Bill & Iddy, found 6 new nests and 9 false crawls. The new nests are 182, 183, 184, 185, 186 & 187. See below for a few pictures from the morning patrol. If you would like to adopt one of these nests, click the button below to be taken to our adoption page. The Unique ID's for the nests are: 252043, 252045, 252061, 252062, 252063 & 252067.

Part of the proceeds from the nest adoption goes back to our turtle program! The turtles thank you for the support!

We are excited to share that we broke the morning nest count record! The maximum number of nests we had found before was in 2016 when we had 10 nests in one morning. Yesterday we found 12, breaking the record by two nests. This season is looking like a banner year so it will be interesting to see if we break this daily nest record again!

​See below for a couple pictures from morning patrol. I was joined by our two volunteers, Bill & Iddy. We were out on the beach past 11 a.m. as we also had to relocate two nests as well! The turtles are keeping us busy.

We walked all the way to the inlet and got a glimpse of a sea turtle returning after successfully laying a nest. We were excited to get to witness the whole process on our walk back. We got to witness a turtle laying and covering close to the white building where we started! The turtle wanted to ensure we got our daily steps in!

The windless night led to many bug bites but it was worth it to see this beautiful sight. By the time the turtle finished it was after midnight and was technically "World Turtle Day", how fitting! This turtle laid nest 156 on our state park beach. The following morning our intern, Cadey, and volunteer, Tori, found 9 new nests on the state park beach. See below for pictures of the nest. To adopt nest 156, click the button below to be taken to our adoption page. The Unique ID of this nest is: 251670

Part of the proceeds from the nest adoption goes back to our turtle program! We thank you for the support.

We had a beautiful walk to the inlet with only a couple false crawl activities. We were still staying positive to hopefully get the chance to witness a sea turtle. On the way back from the inlet we found another false crawl but no sea turtle. The following morning, Chloe and our volunteer, Nona, found four new nests and two false crawls. I have included pictures below from the morning patrol. The new nests found were: 145, 146, 147 & 148. If you would like to adopt one of the nests, the unique ID codes are: 249647, 249650, 249660 & 249662. 

Part of the proceeds from our nest adoptions goes back to our turtle program. Click the button below to be taken to the adoption page. We appreciate all of the support for our sea turtles!

We sell the "I survived" FRESPACE T-shirts because having to walk 3-miles at 10 o'clock at night can feel like quite the accomplishment! Well our night walk group got off easy last night with having to walk less than a tenth of a mile. There was a turtle laying eggs to the right of the white office building. She managed to climb the steep scarp and find a place to lay her eggs. This was our shortest night walk this season! Our first night walk had us on the beach until 1:30 a.m. but this walk ended before 11am.

See the pictures from the morning patrol below. Our morning patrol team managed to record our nest from our night walk before getting poured on. We are still waiting to get out on the beach and finish recording our crawls. Hopefully the rain/lightning can stop for a few hours so we can get everything recorded.

UPDATE: We are back from patrol and we found another 8 nests and 3 false crawls!

If you would like to adopt nest 131, click on the button below to be taken to our adoption page. The unique ID for nest 131 is: 248626

Proceeds from the nest adoption help to support our turtle program.

We were hoping for three successful night walks back to back but unfortunately we got rained out on Saturday night. After the presentation, the lightning was far enough away but there was a slight drizzle and a strong wind. After walking down the beach a third of a mile, the rain turned from a drizzle to a downpour. Trying to walk back against the wind was a struggle! We diverted through the campground where the dunes and trees protected us from the wind, although the rain still got us soaked.

The following morning, our morning patrol also got drenched! They found one nest and eight false crawls, so the chances of us seeing a nesting turtle was slim on the night walk. 

We are thankful for the rain but we are ready now for sunshine weather!

See below for nest #116 found on Sunday morning. If you would like to adopt this nest, click on the button below to be taken to our adoption page. The unique ID for this nest is: 248195. Part of the proceeds from the adoption help our turtle program.

Fingers crossed for successful and dry night walks this coming week!

Our second night walk of the season was another rainy night but thankfully the lightning had passed and we were able to still walk. We walked all the way to the inlet before seeing a nesting turtle. This loggerhead sea turtle had just finished up laying and was covering her nest. We got to see her pack down the sand and then fling the sand to cover any evidence of the egg chamber. She was a fast nesting turtle so perhaps she has done this once or twice before.

The following morning we marked this nest as 108, finding 5 new nests in the morning bringing our total to 109. We are now tied with the nest total from last year and have two more months of nesting. 

If you would like to adopt nest 108, click on the button below to be taken to the adoption page. The unique ID for the nest is: 246257

Part of the proceeds from a nest adoption go back to our turtle patrol at Edisto Beach State Park. Thanks for all of the support!

Blog Post By: Cadey, Sea Turtle Intern

​​            Last night we had our first night walk program of the season, it was also my first ever! It was so awesome to see everyone’s turtle excitement. Although we had a good storm late in the day we had many people brave the weather to attend the program. Thankfully, by the end of the presentation the storm cleared our beach and was offshore enough to keep us dry while also giving us a beautiful show while we were in search of turtle activity.
            We walked hopefully for a bit before we saw any activity. But once we came across the first false crawl there was a good boom of activity. We saw the aftermath from where one turtle bulldozed right through another blocked off nest knocking the posts right over. We then saw where again another turtle had bulldozed over one nest on her way in and then took out another one on her way back out, even snapping one of the wooden posts. She surely was not letting anything get in her way! After a series of false crawls and a nest with no momma in sight we were getting close to the end of the beach. Still hopeful with all the activity we saw we carried on, and right before we got to the inlet there she was! A beautiful loggerhead beginning to dig her egg chamber. We waited for her to begin laying before we got a closer look and it was surely worth the walk all the way to the inlet! Our turtle momma was glowing, literally! She had a good coat of bioluminescence on part of her shell. (Bioluminescence is the emission of light by living organisms, so in the dark of the night we could see the glowing blueish organisms on her and in the sand.) After she finished nesting she began her (indirect) route back to the ocean making some funny little changes in direction until the waves covered her from our sight. We then started our trek back where we ran into another smaller turtle on her way back to the ocean and a few more new sets of tracks.
            This morning after our sea turtle patrol returned from duty we discovered the turtle we got to see nest last night had laid our 100th nest of the season!!! It was surely a beautiful night we couldn’t forget! I am super excited for the rest of our night walks this season. I hope to see you all out there!

If you would like to adopt nest 100, click the button below to be taken to the adoption page. The unique ID number for nest 100 is: 244797

We are back at it again with our Night Walk program. We have our first night walk of the season tonight! See the poster below for more details on how to sign up plus where to learn more.  There is an age restriction on these walks. We only accept ages 11 and up as we can be walking 3 miles in soft sand and can be out until 1 a.m.

This program does require advanced registration.
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Stay tuned to the post tomorrow on whether or not we saw a turtle nest! Fingers crossed!