We are reaching the end of our 2023 sea turtle nesting and hatching season. October 5th was a big morning for us as we found two green nests hatched! Nest 45 was located in the dunes and didn’t receive wash over so no surprise there with it hatching. Nest 44 was located mid beach and received wash over from Hurricane Idalia last month but still produced hatchlings! This was great to see after we have had numerous failed nests from wash over.
We’ll determine the success of each nest as we excavate nest 45 on Sunday Oct 8th and nest 44 on Monday Oct 9th. These may be the final successful hatches of the season. Will the results of these excavations help us cross the 2500+ hatchling mark for the season? Stay tuned to find out!
Following these excavations, we’ll have 4 nests remaining on the beach. We’ll give them a full 80 days from when they were laid for a chance to hatch but they may have stopped developing with the Hurricane Idalia wash over.
Photos and work conducted per MTP-038
