This Leatherback hatchling was found on his way to the beach several days ago. He/she came from a nest that we found hatched on 7/21/10, so we subtracted the number of days that it took the average nest to incubate last year, resulting in our guestimate of when the nest was laid. We had to resort to that guesstimate, since this was one of the nests not staked out by EAI, Inc., nor initially recorded by us. We added a few days to the average because this was a Leatherback nest and they take, on the average, more days than do the Loggerhead nests to incubate. Our estimate of when that Loggerhead nest was laid is 5/23/10.If you compare this hatchling to the Loggerhead hatchling on a previous blog post, you may be able to see the difference in size (the Leatherback hatchling is about twice the size of the Loggerhead hatchling).
With the northern fringes of Tropical Storm Bonnie hitting our beaches today, we will keep our fingers crossed that the wave action generated by the storm will not damage or destroy those nests located on our beaches.
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