Posts by Caswell Turtle Watch

No new nests to report, but we did have a stranded turtle during our Morning Patrol.  Thanks to Kathleen Bowman and Barbara Waite for assisting! Here is the Facebook post.Meet Aqua Pearl Amanda. She is a Kemp’s Ridley ‘Hybrid’ that was stranded on Caswell Beach this morning. She suffered a boat strike but was also Read More

Good Morning!  (It really is!)Our season has truly begun, we have NEST #1! We will be sending out a Morning Report on the mornings we find nests or activity.  Can’t wait to see what the season brings in! This is what the Morning Patrol does to see if it is a nest or a False Read More

Happy First Day of Sea Turtle Season! Our Morning Patrol was out at sunrise to see what they could see!  We don’t expect any crawls for a couple of weeks, but we do know the turtles have been off shore.  The Leatherbacks have been active off the Ocean Crest Pier this week!  We will not Read More

Crawls 87 Nests (85 Loggerhead, 2 Kemp’s Ridley) 38 False Crawls Average Crawl Widths Loggerhead – 35.5” Range:  26-44” Kemp’s – 24 inches Range:  22-26” Nests 21 Relocated Nests – 21.1% (19 Loggerhead, 2 Kemp’s Ridley) 1 Wild Nest (never located) 66 In Situ Nests 2 Nesting Sites (later determined to be False Crawls Averaged Read More

THAT’S A WRAP! The last nest of the season was inventoried last night!  Nest #83 was way above the high tide line near the dune grass in front of the 100 Villa.  Even though it was not over-washed by the tide, it appears there was possibly some rain inundation at some point. Many of the unhatched Read More

Sunday night and Monday morning gave nothing to report but a beautiful and quiet beach.   Teresa called Matthew to ask about excavating Nest #80 earlier than 80 days since the washovers continued even over the weekend.  He agreed.There was no further activity at Nest #83 overnight.We are also officially changing Nesting Site #2 to a Read More

Nest #83 had one more hatchling emerge last night at about 7:00. This one knew where he was supposed to go, straight to the water, and didn’t look back! Unfortunately, thanks to Hurricane Sam’s extra high tides, Nest #80 was over washed again. Special thanks to the caller yesterday who retrieved some of the green Read More

Friday Night: Oh, What a Night! 40 hatchlings from Nest #83 finally decided to make an appearance with several visitors present to see (Day 67).  Unfortunately they battled a tidal pool and some very distracting lights.  After many trips up and down the runway we had to bucket them and take them to the edge of Read More

Thursday Night: It was a buggy night, but a successful inventory for the nest in the dune! Nest #86 Inventory Live Hatchlings-0 Dead Hatchlings-0 Pipped Eggs-0 Unhatched Eggs-9 Hatched Egg Shells-101 Friday Morning: No Turtle activity, but there sure were a LOT of boats out there!  Cheers for the King Mackerel Tournament! This conservation work for Read More

Wednesday Night: We had 2 great inventories last night! Nest #84 Inventory Live Hatchlings-0 Dead Hatchlings-4 Pipped Eggs-0 Unhatched Eggs-7 Hatched Egg Shells-98 Nest #85 Inventory Live Hatchlings-3 Dead Hatchlings-0 Pipped Eggs-1 Unhatched Eggs-1 Hatched Egg Shells-94 Thursday Morning: Nest #86 had a big crab hole, but no shells dug out. This conservation work for Read More