Sunday, July 27th- First Sign of Emergence Nest02R

 It was a hot morning with the temperatures quickly approaching 90 degrees. Erin and Tammy walked the short end of the beach, while Dani & Pam walked the longer end.

 All looked good on the short end and when Erin and Tammy got back to the beach entrance Erin received a call from Dani saying she saw hatchling tracks at Nest 2. This is exciting, since the whole turtle team has been waiting for emergence activity. Dani also said there was 2 hatchlings at the nest, 1 live and 1 dead. The live hatchling was barely hanging on. Dani put gloves on and helped it to the wet sand and to the water. They also noticed a ghost crab in the hole, which they could not get out since he was so deep. 

When Erin got to the nest she noticed there was not a major emergence hole, just the ghost crab hole. It looks like the hatchlings may have been getting ready to come out, but found the ghost crab hole and decided to come out of there instead. Because of this, it is not considered a major emergence. There was about 5 or 6 sets of tracks going to the ocean.  

Erin used the dead hatchling for a paternal DNA research. Erin and Tammy continued to walk the island and meet up with Dani & Pam. When heading back to the entrance, they all stopped back at nest 2 to see if we could try to get the ghost crab out again. We noticed he got out on his own, and we could see more hatchlings moving around in the hole. Right when we were going to begin walking again the team caught a glimpse of a hatchling crawling down from the dunes. It was covered in sand but was moving around well on its own. To make it a little easier for the hatchling, we took it down to the wet sand and watched at it crawled to out into the ocean. 

Once the water hit it, the team noticed there was a red mark on its head and one eye was red. It looked like it had an injury, most likely from the ghost crab. It was a happy moment when the team watched the hatchling swim away, not letting its injury stop it from getting to the ocean. 

All writing and photos done by Erin D.

All sea turtle monitoring by Waties Island Sea Turtle Patrol is permitted and authorized by SCDNR MARINE Turtle Conservation Program under Permit MTP 500