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Nest #5 (June 30th, 2015) 

Nest #5 was found on Tuesday, June 30th by Dennis Silveri in Duck. To top it off, but he saw mama turtle LAYING HER EGGS! Nesting responders responded with record-breaking speed, and oohed and awwwwed all morning. Baby Benji had the great idea to mark off the location of the nest using a line of string, and the team simply enjoyed watching mama turtle do her thing!

Luckily, this was a rare case when nesting responders could ask mama turtle “What were you thinking?!” as she was laying her eggs below the high tide line (and not looking at the dunes at all)! She looked up at them and let them know EXACTLY what she was thinking. Since there’s no arguing with a turtle, NESTers patiently waited for her to leave, waved goodbye, and got to work relocating the nest to a higher part of the beach.  After all was said and done, an impressive 106 eggs were carefully relocated, DNA egg was collected, and the team was able to leave with an amazing experience!

 

NEST #6 (June 30th, 2015) 

Meanwhile…back in KDH….

At the same time as Nest #5 was being enjoyed, the KDH Nesting responders had quite a different animal to tackle! (No turtles were harmed in the making of this blog post)

Perhaps mama sea turtle attended a party late last night, so she decided not to lay her eggs in nest one, but instead chose nest spot two. There were a few eggs near the top of the sand with 11 broken eggs and when John’s smile began to fade the real deal was discovered only 2 cm below the surface of the sand!  Seeing as the nest was super shallow, Chris provided the egg cartons and the team started working on the relocation.  Jennette was so into finding all the eggs she had to be helped out of the “hole”.  Who knows what mama turtle was thinking, the pressure of laying a nest in KDH went to her head! 

Nest #7 (July 1, 2015) 

On the morning of July 1st 7:00 came and went with no word of a nest, so our nesting responders were off the hook, right? WRONG.

Around 10:30 AM KC got a call that someone thinks, strike that, KNOWS that there is a nest at Corolla light. How you ask? They saw mama turtle laying her eggs last night! So KC wrangles up some educators and interns and called up corolla people to check out the site.

And what a site it was! The amazing cabana boys had already set up on the beach for the day, with lawn chairs and umbrellas galore! Only problem? The nest was right in the middle of all of it! Hardly any distinguishable tracks remained, save for the all-important nest site. The lucky fellas who got to see her nesting shared photos, time of nesting (1:57am to be exact). The most incredible thing of all was that one very confident gentleman pointed directly to one spot and declared “Thats the spot!” Now, normally we know it’s very hard to tell exactly where the nest is EVEN if you’re watching her lay it! But considering the trampled-on state of things, we trusted his advice and sure enough! YES! Jane found one of the eggs!

After collecting the DNA egg and marking off the site the team wiped their hands, declared it a job well done, and headed off in the OBCWE Gator! Only to find…. it was out of gas. Womp womp.

So we walked back to work.

-JK