Sea Turtle Nests

Turtle patrols go out early each morning looking for crawls. The crawls are evidence of turtles coming onto the beach and then exiting. These are the first signature a sea turtle leaves when they come onto the beach to lay eggs in what is obviously a very laborious task. For some reason, not all crawls result in the turtle laying eggs because for some unknown reason a turtle will turn around and head back to sea. These non-egg laying crawls are called false crawls.

When a crawl is discovered, the intern on duty is notified and they contact a biologist. The intern and the biologist will usually excavate the nest and move it to a safer place on the beach. Data as to nest location, size, number of eggs, size of eggs and most importantly the type of turtle are recorded.Anyone who has dug at the beach knows this is hot and sandy work. Will and Kris are excavating a nest in this photo.

This is the way a turtle nest looks when the camouflaging sand is removed and the eggs are exposed. The eggs look very much like ping pong balls.

Sad End to a Gentle Creature

I really hesitated to post pictures of this dead turtle but felt the whole story needed to be told. In the two weeks that we have been here, this is the third dead turtle to wash ashore one of which was an endangered Kemps Ridley. It appeared they were all killed by boat props.
These poor guys have only a one in a thousand chance of making it to adulthood and when they do someone runs over them with a boat. The more insidious threat to the sea turtles is man trowing away things that resemble their favorite food, jelly fish. In an earlier post I discussed the number of plastic bags and balloons that we had picked up from the beach. It is thought these things , when in the water, appear to be jelly fish to a turtle, and they gobble them up. Plastics lodge in a turtles digestive system and slowly kill the turtle. I don't know about anyone else, but this doesn't sound like a comfortable way to die to me.