Our night walk program was led by our intern, Cadey. Not too far into the walk there was a dark object emerging from the ocean, in between Cadey and our night walk group. We held the group and turned off our flashlights. The turtle emerged during the dark night and crawled well above the tide line. After several minutes, I crawled up to see what stage of nesting she was at. She was still digging her egg chamber so we waited patiently. During that time, three raccoons tip-toed up near the dunes towards the turtle. I was nervous they would startle her but as soon as they saw me they quickly ran away.
Once she started to lay, the group was able to see her closer. Our group grew in numbers as more and more individuals came from the campground. We got to witness her lay her eggs, cover and then return to the ocean. The following morning the patrol team, Chloe and Nona, found two new nests and 1 hatched nest (pictures to be posted soon). The nest from the night walk is nest 341 on our state park beach. If you would like to adopt the nest, click on the button below to be taken to the adoption page. The unique ID of nest 341 is: 267874. Part of the proceeds goes back towards our turtle program.
0 Comments
We were unable to walk last night after Chloe finished the presentation, as there was a thunderstorm that hit Edisto. The following morning, there were no new turtle nests or false crawls. The morning team, Cadey and Lea, discovered three nests emerged.
We are hosting an inventory program tonight (7/24) at 6:30 p.m., where we go to a nest that has hatched and we dig it up to see the success rate. We count the hatched eggs, unhatched eggs and sometimes there are hatchlings still below! So come on out to hopefully get the chance to witness a sea turtle hatchling and to learn more about our Edisto sea turtles. We had an eventful night walk last night! We ran into a what seemed like the same picky turtle a few different times. She came up onto the beach and false crawled before she got past the tide line each time. But we got to catch her crawl back into the water. We also came across the one nest we had on our beach last night but the turtle had already come and gone. We caught a beautiful moon rise as well!
The following morning our patrol team marked the nest we saw, found 8 false crawls, and 3 hatched nests! If you would like to adopt the new nest found, 338, click on the button below to be taken to the adoption page. The unique ID for nest 338 is: 266901. Part of the proceeds goes back towards our turtle program. On Thursday our intern, Chloe, led the presentation and was going to lead the walk but there was a wicked storm nearby. The lightning was like the paparazzi with all of the flashes. With our unpredictable South Carolina storms, we decided to call off the walk. I took a quick walk down to the campground and back but did not find any turtle activity.
The next morning our intern, Cadey, and volunteers, Nona and Ashby, found 2 new nests, 6 false crawls and 1 nest hatched. The new nests are 335 and 336 on our state park beach. If you would like to adopt one of the nests, then click on the button below to be taken to the adoption page. The unique ID's are: 266398 & 266402. Part of the proceeds goes back towards our turtle program. We made a long trek to the inlet without any turtle activity but enjoyed a beautiful walk under the full moon. On the way back we got to witness the turtle laying nest 330! While watching the turtle lay her eggs, we witnessed another turtle emerging from the ocean down the way. We had to quietly pass by this turtle by the waterline when we walked back to the park office.
The following morning, our patrol team had a busy day! They found the two new nests, one false crawl and one nest emerged. They also had to install several light screens and conduct a few inventories. If you would like to adopt nest 330 from our night walk program, click on the button below to be taken to the adoption page. The unique ID of nest 330 is: 265568. Part of the proceeds goes back towards our turtle program. On Saturday, we ended the walk early due to lightning so no turtle activity was seen. The next morning our turtle patrol found 1 new nest, 2 false crawls and 4 nests that hatched. The one new nest was one unlike any I have found on our state park beach before. This turtle crawled up and dug up an incubating nest. The posts and the screen did not hinder her in digging. She destroyed 100 eggs from nest 145 during her nesting process. When we dug down to find the new eggs and to clear out the broken eggs, we still found incubating eggs from nest 145 below. Hopefully the eggs did not get too badly disturbed and are still viable, time will tell.
If you would like to adopt the one nest found, nest 320, click on the button below to be taken to the adoption page. The unique ID for nest 320 is: 264863. Part of the proceeds goes back towards our turtle program. We had a short but sweet walk to a turtle that was emerging at very low tide. We waited patiently for her to crawl above the high tide line. Our intern, Cadey and myself checked on her periodically to see when she started to lay her eggs. Once she started laying, our group was able to get a closer look and watch her lay, cover and return. She had damage to the back of her shell, which gave us a closer look at the eggs dropping into the egg chamber, it was such an amazing sight! The next morning, our intern Chloe, and volunteer, Nona, located the eggs and marked this nest as 315 on our state park beach. If you would like to adopt this nest, click on the button below. The unique ID of nest 315 is: 264304. Part of the proceeds from the nest adoption goes back towards our turtle patrol! We were so excited to see nest 15 emerge last night during our night walk program! After the presentation, we walked for just a short while until I found a few hatchlings emerging from the surface. We waited (patiently) for nest 15 to "boil" and we were so delighted when upwards of 100 hatchlings made their crawl from the nest to the ocean. Last night was a busy time for hatchling emergences as 11 nests were found to have hatched this morning. There were also three new nests! These nests are 309, 310 and 311 on our state park beach. If you would like to adopt one of these nests, click on the button below to be taken to the adoption page. The unique ID's for nest 309, 310 and 311 are: 263366, 263371 and 263375. Part of the proceeds from the nest adoption goes back towards our turtle program. The turtles and I thank you for the support! We had a long walk to the inlet under a beautiful starry sky. I checked the possible nests for hatching with no luck of seeing any little ones. On the way back, we were nearing the white office building when I got a red flashing signal. Campers were on the beach and spotted a nesting turtle. They kept a great distance of 30 feet. I checked on her and she had started to lay already so the night walk group was able to watch her lay her eggs and then cover and return. The next morning, our patrol marked the nest as 293 on our state park beach. If you would like to adopt this nest, click on the button below. The unique ID to adopt the nest is: 262493. Part of the proceeds from the nest adoption goes back towards our turtle program. The turtles and our patrol team thank you for the support!
Today there were 14 new nests found! Our intern, Cadey, and volunteers, Ashby and Nona, were busy with all of the new activity. The current record of 12 was set earlier this season on June 18th. With finding 14 new nests today we are closing in on the 300 mark! We are currently at 286 nests and still have a month of nesting. Will we reach 350? Stay tuned to find out.
We had a beautiful and very warm, night walk last night. Unfortunately we did not get to see a sea turtle. There were a couple false crawls but the turtle had long since gone. The following morning our dawn patrol team found 1 new nest and 8 false crawls. So our chances of seeing a nesting turtle were slim. The nest they found is 266 on our state park beach. See below for a couple photos taken this morning. If you would like to adopt nest 266, click on the button below to be taken to the adoption page. The unique ID of this nest is: 259430. Part of the proceeds from the nest adoption goes back to our turtle program! |
Leah SchwartzentruberSea Turtle Biologist Archives
September 2023
|