Three Nests & Two False Crawls

Nest 13 on Sullivan's Island had its 13th nest this morning which was found by Karen Bartlett at Station 25. There were 117 eggs that were relocated to a spot northeast of the Station 19 Access Path where they can safely incubate until sometime in late August. Thank you to Vatsa Kadaba for helping again with this one. Now Sullivan's has one more nest than were laid the whole 2025 season.

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Nests 27 and 28 and two false crawls were found on the Isle of Palms. Things got very busy in Wild Dunes as it was the first day for Marinex Construction to begin unloading heavy equipment from barges near Dewees Inlet for the months' long renourishment project starting at the north end. Cindy Bergstrom, Patti Horton, Paige Owens, and Tristi Lowther had the job of not only looking for loggerhead tracks, but giving the OK for work to begin on the beach. They first reported tracks at Port O Call condominiums, then they found two more sets of tracks at Ocean Point at the inlet. The project work had to be held up until we could remove eggs from their path at Ocean Point.

Nest 27 at Port O'Call contained only 3 eggs and Nest #28 at Ocean Point had 108 eggs. Both of these nests were relocated out of the work area and taken near the 30A Access path farther south out of Wild Dunes. We are mystified as to why only 3 eggs were found at Port O'Call. On the advice of our bosses at SCDNR, we did not sacrifice one of the three eggs for the genetics research project. Instead we buried them in a shallower than normal spot under the protective screen of Nest #28 to see if they hatch at the same time as today's other Wild Dunes nest.

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There was also a false crawl reported by Linda Tucker at 17 Beachwood East in Wild Dunes. These tracks were exactly the same as the false crawl in Ocean Point and the nest at Ocean Point. So maybe it was the same turtle trying three times.