Lonely Little Loggerhead

We still haven't seen a lot of activity from our last nest, but it is scratching around down there! I am so worried that the cold is getting to them. In the water, sea turtles will wash ashore 'cold stunned' at temps below 45 degrees. I'm not sure what the threshold is for hatchlings in the nest as sand holds the suns heat and keeps them a bit warmer than the air, but it's still been pretty chilly at night. That makes hatchlings sluggish!



This one little guy was hanging out at the sand surface when I arrived the other morning. He wasn't crawling around under the screen though -- there was a front flipper and half of his head above the sand, the rest of him was still buried underneath. After I removed the screen and waited a few minutes, he started to emerge fully. I did give him a little boost on his trip to the water since this was a relocated nest.



He was still a bit sluggish, even after warming in the rising sun. I gave him a quick dunk in the Gulf to see if that perked him up. As soon as he felt the water, he dashed for the sea. He just needed a reminder that that's his real home.

I feel pretty safe calling this hatchling a 'he'. We didn't measure the temperature of the eggs during development, but it's been pretty chilly since this nest was laid. Lower incubation temperatures yield more male hatchlings, so it's fairly reasonable to believe he's a he.



In addition to the cool temps, this particular nest was well washed in both Gustav and Ike. Frequent washings for several days can increase the humidity, remove or add extra sand (on this nest, it was added), change the incubation temperature and can, if it's washed enough, drown developing embryos or hatchlings in the nest. It's great to see this didn't happen with this nest. We don't know yet what the hatch percentage is, and it's likely to be low, but that's how mother nature works. If we'd left it in place, about 50 feet south of it's current location, it would have eroded out about three days after it was laid in the first of our tropical weather this year.

If you look in the above nest photo, you can see how much sand we had to dig out to get the nest back to it's natural depth. We had to do this three separate times -- after Gustav, after Ike and after a strange low pressure system about two weeks ago. Now I do know why I always have sand in my ears, between my toes and in my belly button. I'm sure going to miss this life!