Sunday Morning, June 10th. All the early morning walking on the Briarcliffe Beach is paying off for Cindy and Larry. Second crawl in 2 days. Incoming and outgoing tracks are just about even in length, suggesting either the turtle came ashore before high tide (12:46AM, Hogs Inlet) or she didn't spend enough time on the beach to nest.
Body Pit was found high on a dune, thrown sand was found but otherwise the pit was small and flat.
Soft sand from probing......Nest?
Larry and Natalie gently remove the top layer of sand.
YES......eggs immediately found just below a thin layer of sand!!
Good Job!!
Four eggs were found broken at the top and dripping yolk. The decision was made to relocate the eggs to a new hole to cut down on contamination from the yolk. One additional egg was found to have two small puncture holes, ghost crab??
Lots of eggs, much more than expected. Now it is apparent why the eggs were found so close to the surface. Old egg cavity after about 1/2 of the eggs have been removed.
Larry dug a new hole just about one foot back from the original. Transferring the eggs was a long and tedious job.
The hole originally dug by the mother. Very deep, but not deep enough for her 133 eggs!!
128 eggs carefully relocated to new hole.
The egg found with two small puncture holes was used for the DNA egg.
Egg shell is emptied into the water, shell is placed in vial to be sent for DNA analysis.
NEST #2
Thank you Larry and Cindy! And Thanks for the pictures, Cindy
Thank you Natalie for coming out to see what we were doing.
And thank you Laura for coming when the call went out and helping count those eggs as we moved them.
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