Tuesday, May 20th - We had some action today - False Crawl 01

 Yeah! I no longer have to say "maybe tomorrow" any longer.  The Tuesday volunteers and our guest  discovered a crawl just north of Marker 7.  She is a big mom-ma - her track was 35 to 36 inches wide.  She has most likely a barnacle on her plastron, very distinctive crawl pattern.  She crawled in during high tide crawled up on the slope of the dune.  I could not find any soft sand while propping where she may of dug the nest chamber. We speculated she left when she ran into some dune grass that impeded her digging.  You can see her shape in the sand, but no true crescent shape, there was some thrown sand, but not a lot.  After looking at her incoming and outgoing crawls, they were just about even.  We are hoping she is going to come back tomorrow.

Incoming crawl - a very distinguishing drag mark in her crawl.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Outgoing crawl

She crawled up to the slope of the dune

See her outline in the sand - we think the dune grass impeded her nesting

Her tracks - incoming and outgoing

 

 

 Many thanks to Steve and Barb who came out and cut the large black pipe item.  Today due to the low tide they were able to cut and load the item into the back of Steve's truck to be delivered to the recycle center.  It was a really smelly job.

A very happy group of volunteers!

All sea turtle monitoring by Waties Island Sea Turtle Patrol is permitted and authorized by the SCDNR Marine Turtle Conservation Program under Marin Turtle Permit MT500.

Pictures and text by Leslie P