Night Walk 7/16 - A SUCCESS!

We had a very short walk to see not one but two adult loggerhead sea turtles during our night walk on Thursday. There was one turtle already ashore near the Pavilion and when our interns and participants were starting to make their way, a turtle started to emerge from the ocean. They patiently waited as the turtle crawled ashore but unfortunately she ended up returning without laying her eggs.

The good news was that the turtle near the Pavilion started to lay her eggs so we got to witness her lay, cover and then make a long crawl to the ocean. Since it was still early, we decided to walk a little further to see if we could see the full circle of life and witness a nest boil. Unfortunately, we did not get to witness any hatchlings but it was such a great opportunity to get to witness a nesting adult.

The following morning we found 4 new nests, 2 false crawls and 2 nests that had emerged. We are now at 168 nests and 97 false crawls. The nest we saw last night is marked as nest 165 on our state park beach. We had to relocate this nest as it was below the Spring high tide line. This nest had 106 eggs that we carefully moved closer towards the park. See below for pictures taken from the morning patrol!