Hello everyone!
Now that July has ended, we thought we would share our activities with you. We began our patrols early in the morning of July 15th and have been running 2 shifts each night; one at midnight and one at 5am. This way we are sure not to miss anything! Our hope is that this will keep poachers, human and canine, at bay.
We had some beautiful nights and mornings patrolling the beach. A beautiful moon has been our guide for some nights. We’ve had some storms and rain too, which keep things interesting!
And so, after a half month of patrols we have relocated 36 nests for a total of 3,402 eggs. These are all incubating safely in our hatchery.
We have lost 5 nests to human poachers and 1 to dogs.
10 times a turtle has come up on to the beach and decided not to lay her eggs. Some we believe are due to harassment by beach dogs, others due to the beach itself. We have had some sand cliffs by the water’s edge due to erosion that the turtles are not able to climb. Sometimes they go ahead and lay their eggs at the bottom, but sometimes they go back to the sea and (we hope) come up in a different place.
We have tagged 9 turtles, one of whom we saw again 14 days later. Our Olive Ridleys will nest 3 times in one season about two weeks apart each time. We are always so excited when we see a return customer!
In addition, we have rescued 6 nests for awesome adopters in our Adopt-A-Nest program!
Finally, we have logged 4 deceased turtles. None of these were recent deaths, but sad to see nonetheless.
Well, that is our story for July. Maybe we will have hatched babies to report in August. They take 45 days, so it will be close!
Here are some pictures from our adventures!
And some of our great team of volunteers, including one guest volunteer!
And finally, here is a video of a mama making her way back to the sea after nesting. my personal favorite is to see her safely take those first few strokes in the waves!
