Night Walk 7/6 - A SUCCESS!

We had an eventful night walk on Tuesday! As soon as we started to walk, I noticed a dark form crawling out of the ocean between myself and our night walk group! We had a turtle emerging. We thought this may be the shortest night walk to date but unfortunately she decided it was not the spot for her. We got to watch her once she was crawling back into the ocean.

Further down the beach, tracks were seen but the turtles had already come and gone, also completing false crawls. Continuing our trek towards the ocean, another crawl was seen but this time there was only one incoming track. We waited and waited and waited while this turtle was completing her egg chamber. We wondered why it was taking her so long. Finally once she was laying we were able to see that she was missing part of her rear left flipper! No wonder she had a harder time digging. We watched as she covered her eggs and then returned to the ocean.

The following morning, our patrol team marked this nest as 153! This nest was situated too close to the scarp and below the Spring high tide line so a relocation was needed. They carefully moved her 101 eggs to a safer location. In total, our patrol team found 2 new nests and 7 false crawls.

The body pit from nest 153!