KIIRA FINDS ALREADY HATCHED SEA TURTLE NEST

In one of the photos above, Kiira is pointing to a sea turtle nest that hatched within the last week or so.  Kiira stayed with her grandparents over the Labor Day weekend and went on several "turtle nest walks" with her grandpa.  We did not see any hatchlings that were struggling to reach the sea in the morning after sunrise, but that was probably a good sign that most of them had already made it to the ocean during the night. We also found a few hatchling tracks that we followed for many yards that ran parallel to ocean shore.  Fortunately, all of those eventually ended going to the water's edge, so we guessed that they had made it safely into the ocean. Kiira also found some sea turtle egg shells that were brought up to the surface of the nest by the hatchlings that had already climbed out of the nest.  In another photo, she is holding a "dead" egg that was dug up by an EAI employee because most of the eggs in the nest had already died and the nest was not going to hatch any hatchlings.  Kiira now has several dried sea turtle egg shells to add to her collection.

GRANDDAUGHTER ON TURTLE NEST WALK TODAY

Our granddaughter, Kiira, was able to go with us on a turtle nest walk today and we were lucky to find an EAI employee who was digging up a nest that was long overdue for hatching.  She indicated that they didn't always know why the nest didn't hatch, but that sometimes the condition of the sand, or many other conditions, left the nest with most of the eggs unhatched, as was the one we saw this morning.  You can see the unhatched eggs on the sand below the EAI employee's head in one of the photos in this posting.  It was very disappointing to see this situation, especially since we were all anticipating seeing some hatchling tracks that led to the ocean when we started our beach adventure today. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that any of the eggs hatched in this nest - at least from the remains that were dug up from the nest today.

SUCCESS FOR ANOTHER 60+ HATCHLINGS!

So.... here was a nest that neither EAI nor this blogger had marked or recorded previous to it hatching on 8/1/2012!  Fortunately, some tell-tale tracks alerted this writer to the existence of a nest that had hatched in the night.  When the tracks were followed back up toward the dune line, a few heads were just barely visible above the sand - getting sunburned because the ones on top of the "masses" in the channel coming up to the surface had stopped, realizing it was bright daylight, while the ones underneath were still pushing the top ones up and out.  It wouldn't be long before those exiting in the bright and hot sunlight would either die from being captured by birds, crabs, or other animals, or would die from heat exhaustion and drying out before they could reach the water.  Also, fortunately, the 25 - 30 hatchlings that had remained in the nest after daybreak found their way up and out of the nest and to the ocean, making a total of perhaps 60 or more from that nest that had successfully made it to the ocean during the night and then immediately after sunrise. Possibly, the large being that provide a long shadow over them, along with some "protection",  had assisted in their travel to the ocean!

TURTLE DAD AND TURTLE GRANDKID

Recently, my granddaughter, Kiira, joined me on a "turtle walk" early one morning while she was staying with us.  You can see by the photo included in this post that while we didn't see any "hatchlings" left over from the previous night's hatchings, we did find plenty of evidence that at least 59 hatchlings crawled from their nest to the ocean from one nest, and another 32 tracks near the water line indicated that most of another nest that hatched overnight also made it to the ocean.  We'll have to get out again next week to see if we can see any "stray" hatchlings as they make their way to the ocean.

So, what's with the photo orientation?  We'll have to ask the website developers why they don't have a convenient way to manipulate the photo clockwise and counterclockwise on the site - especially when the photo was correctly oriented when it was uploaded.  In any case, you get the idea.  See the hatchlings' tracks that Kiira is pointing out to the camera?  She spotted those tracks before I did.  Sharp eyes - and sharp granddaughter!

I THINK HE/SHE MADE IT!

 I think that he/she made it!  Yes, it's quite amazing, but this is not the first time that this blogger has followed some misguided hatchling tracks for great distances along the beach. From time to time, because of lights that distract the hatchlings, or just general disorientation once the hatchlings push their way out of the nest, a few hatchlings seem to go amazing distances - when you consider how small and slow they are, parallel to the shore line.  This morning, I found another such track and I followed it for a very long distance, relatively speaking.  Most of his/her nest-mates had headed for the ocean once they got out of the nest (see photo with very light tracks on the wet beach leading to the ocean), but this misguided one went a total of 485 yards, by my calculations.  I'm not sure of the accuracy of that statistic, but I used my hand-held GPS and found that he had traveled a total of 10.4 "seconds".  As you know, when using latitude and longitude, a common way to list the location of an object on the earth's surface is in "degrees", "minutes" and "seconds" of latitude and longitude. The "minutes" and "seconds" don't really have anything to do with time in this instance, but they are, along with "degrees", a measure of distance between two points on the map.  A few days earlier, I had paced out one "second" of latitude on the beach.  My estimate was that one "second of latitude" equaled 140 feet, so that's how I arrived at the figure of 485 yards.  That was calculated as follows:

Hatchling Tracks to the Ocean

N 27 28 03.8 minus N 27 27 53.4 = 10.4 seconds, so 10.4 seconds of latitude X 140 feet per "second" of latitude = 1456 feet.  1456 feet divided by 3 = 485 yards

I'd be happy to have anyone do their own calculations and correct any major errors that I may have made in my calculations, but until I receive that response, I'll stick to my answer and remain in awe of the little tike that traveled that far.  By the way, I followed the tracks until he made a turn for the ocean and I lost his tracks in the wet sand.  That leads me to believe that he/she actually made it to the water and will start a long 20 year journey around the Atlantic Ocean basin and, perhaps one day, return to our area to lay eggs in another nest on our beach!

By the way, speaking of sea turtle journeys, has anyone else seen the DVD movie of such a journey?  I believe that the movie is called "Turtles: The Amazing Journey", and it truly is an amazing journey.  If you haven't seen it yet, treat yourself to one of nature's most interesting animal journeys. I'm sure that you'll enjoy it.  It's done in a very "tasteful" way, so that it's appropriate for children, as well.

LET THE HATCHING BEGIN!

As of approximately June 30, 2012 there have been several sea turtle nests that have hatched along our stretch of beach.  The sea turtle nest chart included in this posting is current as of July 4, 2012.  The photo of the Leatherback  hatch-ling is from a previous year.  This blogger has not yet seen any live hatch-lings - only a few who didn't make it to the ocean after climbing out of the nest.  Unfortunately, we are seeing a number of nests destroyed by "flooding", where the nest is too close to the shore and the high tides wash over the nests and flood them with water which then stops the eggs incubation cycle.  Many nests were laid too close to the shore line this year, because the sand near the Jetty is either too hard (that area of the beach was re-nourished this winter), or the escarpments along that area were too high for the adult sea turtles to climb far enough up on the beach to dig a nest and lay their eggs.  Any additional storms this year will increase the number of nests flooded or destroyed.  So far this season, there have only been 5 nests that are known to have been destroyed.  Keep your fingers crossed for another "quiet" year as far as storms go along our coast.

IT'S ABOUT TIME!

It's close to hatching time!  The photo above shows some "hatchlings" from several years ago, but the hatching season is upon us again - almost!  In fact, several of the recorded nests along our stretch of beach are due to hatch, although there is no evidence of any nests so far that have actually hatched.  Unfortunately, we have had several nests that have been "flooded out" or "washed out" by storm wave action, such as during the impact of the tropical storm called "Debbie" that flooded out much of the Florida panhandle area.  Fortunately, we had semi-strong winds and not as many damaging waves that could have destroyed more of the turtle nests on our beaches on the east coast of Florida.

During my beach walk this morning, I checked on about 7 of the recorded turtle nests that we estimated would hatch in early July.  None of the seven nests showed any activity, but I will keep a closer eye on them in the weeks to come, since it's about time!

In case any of you viewers would like to contribute your name and/or some money to what I believe is an important "project", you may want to check out the Sea Turtle Restoration Project at to see what that organization is attempting to do to save endangered sea turtles from being killed in the Gulf of Mexico.  It appears to be a very worthy project and will have implications for sea turtle nesting on our coast, as well.