We’ve recently had a large number of false crawls. (False crawls occur when the female sea turtle comes onto the beach but does not lay a nest.) In fact, we’ve had 14 in the last week and 11 of them were on North Beach. This compares to 38 on the entire beach over the first 8 weeks of the season. The timing has been a bit strange but the overall ratio of false crawls to nests is only slightly higher than prior years. Here’s a breakdown of false crawls and nests by year:
Year/False Crawls/Nests
2020*/55/55
2019/77/90
2018/15/31
2017/44/70
2016/67/60
*as of 7/19
Friday, July 17th
The inventory segment of our season has begun! Nest 1 was inventoried this morning. Nest 1 was found by Veronica L’Allier on 5/11. It hatched in 64 days.
Shells – 108
Unhatched eggs – 35
Dead hatchlings – 0
Live hatchlings – 15
Hatch % – 75.0
Emergence % – 64.5
Saturday, July 18th
Jennifer Passantino called early to report a crawl just north of the trash can on North Beach. This wise mama turtle chose the safe area where many of the North Beach nests have been relocated. Sandy MacCoss and Jane Magioncalda probed and found the eggs for Nest 55, which was left in situ.
–Submitted by Gary Fansler