FIRST HATCHLINGS OF THE YEAR

Finally! The first sea turtle nest (Loggerhead nest laid on 5/12/10) hatched overnight on 7/7/10! That was 56 days of incubation - somewhere in the middle of the average of 45-60 days for Loggerhead eggs. The only evidence of the hatchlings was that there were numerous little turtle tracks (mostly) heading toward the ocean. The photo included in this blog was from last year.

As was discussed in an earlier blog this year, many of nests are not "staked-out" with stakes and yellow plastic tape this year. In fact, only about 1 out of 24 are apparently are being staked-out in one section of our beach.

After talking to one of the EAI, Inc. beach patrol members, it was discovered by this writer that EAI, Inc. is in the middle of a study to compare the number of nests laid and hatched on "renourished beach" sections of the beach, versus "natural sand" sections of the beach. "Renourished beaches" are those where the Army Corps of Engineers has pumped in sand "sludge" from offshore sandbars to replenish sand that has been eroded by wave action (because of being immediately south of the jetty), as compared to "natural sand" beaches where there has not been much human intervention regarding a lesser amount of erosion of sand in those areas.

I'm not a biologist, but it would seem to me that the "research model" has several major flaws or problems associated with it as I understand the procedure. First, if you are comparing those two differing beach areas (one as the "control"), it would seem to me that you would want to have a good representative sample of both types of beach. The small section of "renourished beach" that EAI, Inc. has selected includes the area immediately south of the jetty ("replenished sand beach) where severe "escarpments" have virtually closed off the beach to any turtle access for many months. That's opposed to the other section of beach ("natural sand") that is located much further south of the jetty and had only mild escarpments, if any, for many of those months. It seems to this writer that a comparison of numbers of nests laid in each of those two sections will be flawed, since there are several major factors that are interfering with any sea turtles attempting to nest in the "renourished beach" area. It doesn't seem as though this "study" will produce valid results.

In addition, it seems self-defeating to the initial purpose of "staking-out" all sea turtle nests for identification and protection to arbitrarily decide to mark only 1 out of every 24 sea turtle nests in the remaining beach areas (those outside of the study parameters) in the section of beach that we have monitored for several years. Those "unmarked/unstaked" nests will not have any protection from beachgoers both before and during hatching, thereby making it an even longer shot that this year's hatchlings will overcome the already long odds that they have for reaching adulthood. This blogger doesn't understand the logic for those parts of the study.