Morning Patrol:
Foxes discovered nest #99 today. Shells were strewn on the beach; we believe there were about 20 shells. 3 eggs that were in the nest were spilt with embryo still inside but plenty of white unaffected eggs still in the nest. We marked it as nest 99 and covered it with the wire cover. It is located between Sellers and Mercer just west of #47.
Fox tracks around 47, 85 and 18 but just tracks.
Nest #37 was underwater for the second night.
Nest #59 got a slight overwash.
Nests 51 and 73 had crab holes.
Nest #21 had lots of hatchling tracks.
Nest #17 and #28 each had a few more hatchling btracks
Last night:
Teams 7 and 10 made gallant efforts to keep the water off their nests but you cannot stop the ocean…no matter how hard you try.
Because of the water coming over nests #24 which had already hatched team #10 tried to excavate and released 4 hatchlings. It was inventoried this morning with 115 shells, 10 unhatched, 3 pipped and 41 dead hatchlings.
Nest #25 was at 53 days and by NCWRC direction we dug as best we could to see if hatchlings had started emergence. 35 live hatchlings were allowed to wake up on the beach and make their way into the water. It was inventoried this morning with 62 shells, 49 unhatched and 25 dead hatchlings.
Nest #28 hatched around 9:42, more a little later totaling 88. More tracks in the runway this morning.
Tonight will be the highest tide yet. Nests 22, 99, 50, 84, 94 and 62 are all in danger of being overwashed. Let us know what you see.
Inventories:
Nest #19- 110 shells, 11 unhatched and 1 live hatchling