As part of #7Days4SeaTurtles, DNR sea turtle technician Sara Weaver is posting about her work this week on Sapelo Island.
Today was an especially easy day on patrol at Sapelo Island. Nesting season is coming to an end, and this morning I did not have any new nests to mark.
However, I did have five nests hatch, and I even got to watch a hatchling make its way into the ocean (pictured).
Most of my day was spent checking predator activity around every nest. As part of a predator study, I record all of the tracks around each nest (most are from raccoons and ghost crabs). And if a nest is predated, or preyed on, I have to count the eggshells.
On Sapelo, when a nest hatches, we leave it alone for 10 days because we do not want to interfere with the hatching process. After 10 days, we conduct a nest inventory, where we dig up the remainder of the nest and determine how successful the nest was.
#7Days4SeaTurtles is a weeklong outreach by DNR Wildlife Resources Division to raise awareness of sea turtle conservation.