Nest #28 again? And 8 more False Crawls!

There was some confusion yesterday when we found three eggs at Port O' Call in Wild Dunes. Those eggs obviously were not fresh. After conferring with the turtle experts at SCDNR, we are calling what was Nest #27 a false crawl because it was not a new nest, but instead three eggs that were left behind, probably from Nest #9 at that location on June 3. These three eggs are still incubating in another safe place. It was quite a remarkable coincidence that a turtle crawled up at that exact location but did not lay eggs this time. So yesterday's nest was Nest 27 and another new one today is Nest 28.

Nest 28 was found by Gina and Doug McQuilken and their dog Luna, at Ocean Point this morning, right where the Marinex Company is setting up equipment for the renourishment project In Wild Dunes. There were 110 eggs laid on the beach across the golf course from 33 Ocean Point Drive. Shawn and the eggs had the help of a ride back down to the Wild Dunes Property Owners' Beach House for work to begin. Our turtles have laid eggs there for both days of the start of the project, delaying the beginning of work in the morning after the required turtle survey by our team. These loggerheads mothers need to go somewhere else for a change! The eggs were taken to our safe zone near 30A path on Palm Blvd.

And again today there were numerous false crawls on IOP, all measuring about 21-22" between flipper claw marks on the beach. Hard to imagine that one loggerhead could come ashore five times to false crawl and then again to lay her eggs. Maybe there were other turtles but all the exact same size? The false crawls were at 28th, 43rd, 53rd Avenues and then more at Grand Pavilion and finally in the Ocean Club/Ocean Point area. Added to these there were three more false crawls at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island where a turtle with 23-24" tracks couldn't seem to find a good place to nest, bumping into the rock wall on one of her attempts..