I want to thank all of the members of the Inventory Team for their participation this season!
We had a record breaking year – 75 Nests!! We had our challenges which always include something new! This year included the cut taking place, again trying to find suitable places for relocations which were many, lots of rain and high tides and our new one – HUMANS! With our very LARGE nursery this year, it was a hot spot for tourists to hang out at night and the lights from rental homes beckoning our nursery hatchlings to pay them a visit! Thanks for all your efforts in helping us deal with all of the above!
Beautsie will soon be sharing the total statistics for this year. I would like to share some statistics I keep for the Inventory Team.
This season we spent 35 days performing inventories starting on July 8 and ending on September 27. We performed 27 public inventories with an average of 23 team members participating at each one. Thank you so much! This is an outstanding level of participation increasing from 17 per inventory last season! 20 of the 75 nests were inventoried privately as a result of circumstances including rain and high tides, wild nests, collapsed dunes, etc. The team personally assisted 277 hatchlings to the water this year. This definitely demonstrates how important our work is. We saved a lot of babies!
We had mostly beautiful days on the beach except for – a few days were rainy, some threatening thunderstorms, some driving rain, and our favorites – black biting flies, biting no-see-ums, biting ants, and other biting bugs in general! Why must they all bite? We need more ‘love bugs’ who just land on us, mate and leave!
I want to send a special thanks to our Junior Patrol Team which includes, Hannah Seabrook, Cailey and Gavin Duguid and Sarah Quinn! It is so much fun to work with them and I am inspired by their commitment and dedication. They are our future! Next season will be Hannah’s last season as a Junior Patrol member. She will be 16 in September of 2016 and will become a licensed permit holder in 2017!! Hannah has been working with the patrol since the age of 7!
Unfortunately, we did not know that on September 14 Nest 65 would be our last public inventory and the final two hatchlings we would see this season! These two were adorable and put on a great show for the spectators!
See you all next season!
Submitted by Terry Fansler