Loggerhead Turtle Nesting

A few weeks ago when I went to the beach to see the sunrise in the morning, this loggerhead turtle was found nesting. When the turtle is laying the eggs she goes into almost a trance and is completely still. Adult loggerhead turtles are about 3-4 feet long and leatherbacks are about 6 feet.

Laying eggs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvNdDuO91hc&feature=related
Covering nest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1V56fQfCTc&feature=related
Crawling to ocean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k_iRThfNa0

Best Loggerhead Turtle Nest Ever!

The nest after with puts the egg shells back in.

Last week I went down to the beach for a loggerhead nest survey. It ended up being close to claiming the title of the biggest nest ever for that stretch of beach (the record was 161 but this nest had 156). Instead it turned out to be the best condition of a turtle nest ever, with 142 hatched eggs, 14 unhatched, and no pips, dead turtles, or live turtles stuck down in the hole.

Leatherback Turtles

A few days ago I went down to the beach and saw 2 baby leatherback turtles emerge from their nest (shown below). After they had quickly swum to the ocean, the turtle patrol dug up the nest where the rest of the turtles had hatched 4 days ago. They kept digging until an arm length hole had been formed and at that point we had found:

• 65 hatched eggs (the 65 turtles that had hatched 4 days ago)
• 3 live hatchlings in nest (3 live turtles we found while digging and watched slowly swim to the ocean)
• 12 dead hatchlings (the turtles that had gotten out of their shells but then died or were killed))
• 0 live pipped (what would be a turtle still coming out of it's shell)
• 4 dead pipped (died half way out of it's shell)
• 5 whole (the 2 turtles found emerging at first + the 3 live hatchlings = 5 whole)
• 8 damaged (turtles that never made it out of the shell)

50 hatchlings emerged

82 total eggs