Waties Island Sea Turtles 2025: Sunday, October 5th

First I would like to thank all of our Volunteers who attend, and especially all who decided to bring some yummy snacks for our meeting. It was a grand display and I told many of our attendees we could create a WITSMP Cookbook with all of the delicious goodies that we were treated.

After everyone had a plate, Leslie gave a summary of our sea turtle nesting season. We had a total of 9 nests, 6 were in situ, 4 relocated. We had a total of 6 False Crawls - 3 PN's - 2 became False Crawls and PN03 became our Nest 09. Our incubation duration is 59.7 days, where the South Carolina incubation duration is 54.2 days.

Leslie congratulated all teams who moved nests to higher, safer ground. We did not lose a nest this year, and only had one washover from the high wave action from Hurricane Erin who was along our coast for a couple of days.

Our new LOA Melissa F had a grand year year and now has one year under her LOA belt. Congratulations Melissa! Job well done.

Here's some things to remember -

- A new company to print our merchandise. We did submit one order with the new company this year, and another order will be submitted when we start the 2026 nesting season.

- The Thursday Volunteers started our season on May 1st and they ended the season on Thursday, September 25th.

- May 20th was our first False Crawl, May 21st was our first nest.

- We had a Kemp's Ridley stranding in June

- Tropical storm Chantal

- In July we had a SCDNR site visit with Kelly Lambert

- August 22nd Hurricane Erin pounded our beaches for a few days

- Last inventory was Nest 08 on Thursday, September 25th

Interesting finds on the beach

- First Diamondback Terrapin Nest found in May

- After Chantal passes all Volunteers picked up multiple bags of trash from the beach for about a week

- Message in the bottle

- Large items - patio chairs, rugs, and large black pipe which Steve and Barb had to cut to remove it from the beach

- Deceased animals - alligator, and a nutria

It was the year of the Ghost Crab who harassed our nests all summer. We caught 22 Ghost Crabs at Nest 03 and 20 Ghost Crabs at Nest 06R. Even with the constant harassment we lost a small number of eggs and hatchlings. The only nest they did not find was our Nest 09 which our PN03. We could not find the egg chamber, neither did the Ghost Crabs!

Leslie gave a brief and incomplete summary of our DNA results, to date we only have Nest 01 and Nest02 results.

It was a good meeting, and I think everyone enjoyed. We did have two guests, Melissa and Kathy bought their husbands along and Jackie Boyce joined us. As the tide was coming in (King Tide due to fall full moon) for the next few days) we cleaned up and headed back to the shed.

Again many thanks to the LOAs and Volunteers for your commitment and dedication to this monitoring program. Hoping to see you enjoyed and learned this year, and I hope to see all next year.

Leslie

Summary and photos by Leslie