Night Walk 6/20 - A SUCCESS!

The nest from the night walk program

We had a beautiful, starry and breezy walk to the inlet without any turtle sightings. On our way back we were still hopeful that we may get to witness a nesting turtle. We made it back to the office building and we did a quick check to the right of the office, when turtle tracks were spotted!

I crawled up her tracks to see where she was and what she was doing. I could hear the noise of her scooping out the sand for the egg chamber. We patiently waited as she dug a chamber big enough to fit her clutch of eggs. Once she started to lay, we got to witness her finish laying her eggs, cover and return to the ocean. This was a large loggerhead, measuring 107.2 cm in length of her carapace. She also had many different organisms occupying her shell, truly representing her nickname of "moving ecosystem".

The following morning on dawn patrol, only one nest was found! We were blessed to be able to witness the only turtle that nested on our beach that night. This nest is marked as 102 on our state park beach.

Our volunteer, Derek, found the location of the eggs!

One egg taken for the DNA Study