Last night, turtles of several species were out in force on our 6 miles of beach! It seems the peak 2 weeks has come a week late and we are in the thick of it!
PRG: Lourdes found a crawl at the southern end of Prince George. She continued her walk to the inlet and finding no other activity returned to the crawl. The body pit was large and deep and the tracks were not alternating, but straight flipper marks lining up in pairs. A tail drag went up through the middle of the wide crawl. All of this suggested a green turtle nest. Despite the turtle exiting directly on top of her incoming crawl (obscuring helpful landmarks), she quickly probed and found the nest. The eggs were larger than loggerhead eggs, and the yolk filled much of the egg. The nest was below the heavy wrack line, so was relocated directly back into soft sand at the toe of the dune on a gentle slope. Congratulations Lourdes!!
PRG05 Relocated directly back at southernmost house south SS#4 (Brienza)
DEB: Pat S. began her arrival at the Beach Club with a stare down with the fox (a bit of foreshadowing of what was to come). She found 2 crawls close together with one leading up to the adobe (Sutton) house and the other to the Keel house both just south of WW#2. The fox/coyote had visited both with tracks all through the crawls and on the nests. There were open chambers and a total of 13 eggs depredated. Pat and Bill cleaned up their nests of yolk. Going forward, Pat would be happy with just a normal nest…good job:)
DEB59 Natural just south WW#2 (Keel house dune) very loopy incoming/outgoing crawls (coyote/fox in pursuit?)
DEB60 Natural just south WW#2 (Sutton house)
HOB: Mitzi and Judy M. teamed up this morning and found a false crawl down near SS#12. We believe this is the same turtle as HOBFC18/20 that leaves an open chamber and seems to have a right rear flipper issue judging from her crawl pattern.
HOBFC22 17 yds. north SS#12 False Crawl no interruption of tracks
PRG 5 DEB 10 HOB 16 SCUTE 91 SC 3983
