What great camouflage this little guy/gal had one early morning this week. In fact, it was too good, since we almost stepped on him/her before seeing some movement in the sand! The hatchling seemed to be a lone straggler, and was covered in sand because the sand was very wet from a previous night's rain. The sand apparently clung to him as he crawled out of the nest - more so than usual. In any case, he did make it to the ocean with some time and extra effort. It's especially dangerous for hatchlings to emerge from their nest during daylight hours, because they are then subject to being eaten by birds, raccoons and crabs on land and by fish once they reach the water. Not good timing, but at least this one had a head start by at least reaching the water! If you click on the photo in the blog, I believe that it will enlarge the photo for you to see how nicely camouflaged he is.
Hurricane Irene destroyed most of the remaining sea turtle nests on our stretch of beach yesterday, last night and this morning, as the storm has now moved even in latitude to the border between Florida and Georgia. We really don't like to see sights like we found on the beach this morning, where sea turtle eggs are rolling around in the surf and laying where they had been deposited by the high waves and tides during the last 24 hours. The devastation of nests appears to be so bad, that I'm concerned that there may be none left untouched by the waves and wind. It's a very sad sight, since my calculations show that there were approximately 60 nests (7 marked by EAI and the other 50 + identified by me as "possible" nests). We had already documented that 16 nests had hatched previous to the storm, but there doesn't seem much hope that the remaining nests will have surived. We have at least one more exceptionaly high tide this evening, so I'll try to get out again tomorrow morning to see what may be left! This storm created real devastation in regard to the sea turtle nests along our coast!
