Night Walk 6/27 - A sea turtle spotted!

We had a hot and humid walk to the inlet without a turtle sighting. After checking around the corner of the inlet, I was walking back to meet the group when I spotted a dark object emerging from the water, very near where the group was located. I radioed the group and all the lights were turned off and everyone sat still as the loggerhead proceeded to crawl ashore to find a place to nest. Unfortunately, she crawled to an area with a steep scarp with no suitable place to nest. She tried a few different places before ultimately turning around and heading back to the ocean. On her way back we were able to take a measurement of her carapace and scan for a PIT tag. Her carapace length was 99.2cm and no PIT tag was found.

The following morning we found the one false crawl from the night before and one new nest! With very little turtle activity that evening, we were blessed to get to see a sea turtle! Who knows, perhaps the one that nested was the turtle we saw and she was able to return and successfully lay! This nest is marked as nest 117 on our state park beach.

​See below for pictures from the morning patrol!