Thursday, June 5th our nest dry spell ended today, Nest #03

 The Thursday volunteers braved the rainy weather this morning, and were quite lucky to discover a nest, and a "PN" Possible Nest.  Our "dry spell" has broken.  Hoping for more sea turtle action in June.  The nest was laid toward the upper end of the island.  She came in crawled to the top of a dune, slid down a little, made a quick right turn and created her body pit.  Her track width was 36 inches wide and she is dragging a possible barnacle on her plastron.  It possibly could be our big mom-ma sea turtle who laid nest 01 - time will tell.

 

Incoming crawl

 

 

 Look in the background of the picture, you can see where she crawled up the face of the dune.

 

 

 

Outgoing crawl

 

Body Pit

   

Body Pit

Thursday Volunteers - Nest #03

We headed south on the beach where we earlier had spotted a crawl.  This crawl was a little more difficult to determine both the size of the turtle, due to the storms and rain last night and early this morning.  The tracks disappeared half way up the beach and reappeared close to the dunes.

 

You can see the crawl tracks coming in from the ocean, but than they disappear

 

Incoming track

Outgoing track

 

We were able to see her tracks again, close to the dunes.  It did look like she nested, but the body pit was not as defined as we normally see.  There was a crescent shape of sand, but not really thrown sand - or due to the rain it was not clearly apparent.

Body Pit

 

 

 

 

 

 

We did probe the area.  Where the high sand was located we continued to run into sea grass roots.  We marked the area as PN01 - Possible Nest 01.  This will allow our volunteers to continue to watch over this area.  Due to the way the sand was disturbed from the storm and rain, it was difficult to get a good measurement of her crawl - it was between 34 to 36 inches.  Her tracks also looked like she may of been dragging something on her plastron.  Could this be the same sea turtle who laid Nest 03?

Along with the excitement of some sea turtle action, the Pelicans were enjoying the breezy conditions and soaring around, and were nesting at the Hog Inlet end of the island.

Text and pictures Leslie P

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