Hurricane Ike Flooded Sea Turtle Nest Hatches!!!

I'll have to wait til tomorrow to post photos as my new work day will start in just a few hours but I had to post good turtle/Ike news... The photos aren't that great as i didn't have my tripod to help with low light. I did take a flash photo of the nest area, but well before hatchlings emerged!

I had just returned from a full day at work, trying to assess the damage to some parts of the island and check on nests when Mark called from Opal Beach. He waited until after noon to try to access the beach by ATV -- I wasn't able to early this morning as the tide was still too high.

Mark had stopped by Santa Rosa nest 7111 (we had three nests that day -- Santa Rosa, Fort Pickens and Pensacola Beach). He heard hatchlings, though the nest was wave washed. He asked me to come back in around sunset to see if they were ready to go.



When I arrived at the nest at 1930, I laid down my raincoat on the sand so I could listen to the nest without getting a face full of quartz fragments... It sounded like a waterfall just beneath the surface. That's the sound of sand sifting through the hatchlings as they all wiggle and step on each others flippers and heads -- talk about sibling rivalry! Their movement displaces so much sand that it lifts the ball of hatchlings gradually towards the surface of the sand, from an original depth of about 18 inches. It's neat to see, and fun to learn to predict! They sounded like one of them was about to crawl into my ear, so I knew the nest was just about to hatch... It's so good to see (or hear) that happen, especially in a nest that had a little issue with water.

This turtle mama had some trouble when she laid the 101 eggs back on July 11th. LiMarie found her wandering around the Opal Beach pavilions when she was doing her Saturday turtle patrol! It's just another example of the deleterious effect of artificial lighting on sea turtles. If we hadn't found her and returned her to the sea, she would likely have died in the heat of the July sun...

It's great to see such positive results -- the turtle got back in the water, Fay, Gustav and Ike spared the nest, and now the hatchlings are ready for their first swim. I often wonder if they'd take that step if they knew they'd be swimming for decades!

They'll swim free Saturday, with the light of a nearly full moon to guide them...