More Little Turtles?

In early August, it was once again time for me to head back to the coast to help with sea turtle nest inventories. This time instead of Sapelo Island (one of my favorite places!), we went to Ossabaw Island. Ossabaw is another one of Georgia’s barrier islands. It is located near Savannah and is another hotspot for sea turtles. Here is how my journey with Georgia DNR’s Sea Turtle Biologist Mr. Mark Dodd went…

We arrived on the island early in the morning. We headed to a shed where researching supplies were stored. That’s when we saw donkeys!!! It turns out there is a small group of donkeys that live on the island and roam wherever. They can get into trouble sometimes, but I think they are so cute!

It took a while to get to the beach, but then we began our patrol like usual. No new nests were laid over night, but Mr. Mark did show me a super cool Green Sea Turtle track. A first for me! The key distinction is a loggerhead sea turtle tracks has alternating flipper marks and a green sea turtle track has flipper marks aligned.

Later, we were responsible for inventorying NINE nests! Most of them were very successful nests, meaning most of the eggs hatched and the hatchlings made it out and to the sea. Not everything goes as planned all the time, though. On one nest, we saw tracks going in all different directions showing the hatchlings were disoriented. On a nest we inventoried, we observed many unhatched eggs. This may have been from a wash over or other natural causes. This is okay because not all eggs can make it to large sea turtles; that is important for the ecosystem.

My favorite part of doing nest excavations is when we find baby turtles. These baby turtles may not have formed right, may have hatched too late to come out with the others, or may have gotten trapped in the nest for other reasons. This trip, we found… 6 baby sea turtles in one nest! I named the first one Cob and the rest Cob’s family. I named them that because there was a corn cob on the nest! Lol! These babies were very weak and had a hard time making their way down the beach to the ocean. They kept getting caught in the spartina grass on the beach. It took a long time, but they all made it eventually. After that, we found another one in a different nest and named it Compass because it just knew the sea! It was very strong and determined.

It was a long, hard day of work, but I had so much fun and learned a lot! Sea turtle season will not end for a few more months here in Georgia, but Season 4 is officially a wrap for me! Thank you, Mr. Mark, for giving me this opportunity and teaching me so much about sea turtles and our coast.

That’s all for today! Thanks for listening!