Night Walk 6/9 - A SUCCESS!

The turtles made us work for it on our night walk last night as all of the activity was at the inlet, 1.5 miles down the beach. We had a turtle emerging, so we waited patiently as she made the long trek at low tide up the beach to find a suitable spot to start to dig her egg chamber. While we were patiently waiting for this turtle to start to lay, another turtle started to emerge from the ocean! Through the night vision monocular, the group got a close up look as this other loggerhead sea turtle crawled up to the dunes to create a nest.

We waited for the second turtle to get up high enough in the dunes and then quietly passed below near the ocean to go see the first sea turtle. We got to witness this sea turtle cover her eggs and return to the ocean!

The turtle we saw nest during the night walk program is now nest 125 on our beach! In the morning the dawn patrol team found 3 new nests and 1 false crawl. The other turtle that we witnessed during the walk also was able to successfully nest, which is marked as nest 124.

Nest 125 was in need of a relocation, so the team carefully relocated her 113 eggs to a chamber in a higher and more suitable location. Check out the photos below taken during the dawn patrol!