As part of #7Days4SeaTurtles, DNR sea turtle technician Sara Weaver is posting about her work this week on Sapelo Island.
Today was a longer day than usual. I’m generally finished with work before the hottest part of the day arrives, but that wasn’t the case today. I had three new nests, one nest hatch and I conducted my first nest inventory on my own.
I have definitely had much more challenging days, but since nesting season is wrapping up, I’m used to it being a little slower. We have a total of 205 nests now on Sapelo.
The inventory was really fun. I enjoy doing them because it’s neat to see how well a nest hatched. In this nest, 124 eggs hatched, two dead hatchlings remained in the nest and 16 eggs didn’t hatch. This nest is on the higher end for total eggs, so the inventory took a bit longer than it usually would.
One of the nests that I relocated today had 155 eggs in it, which is quite a large nest. The female’s crawl was also wider than normal though, so she was a big turtle. We normally expect about 80-150 eggs per nest. Our largest nest on the beach has 177 eggs!
#7Days4SeaTurtles is a weeklong outreach by the DNR’s Wildlife Resources Division to raise awareness of sea turtle conservation.