Tuesday, June 21, 2011

a late night walk on the beach

Georgia Sea Turtle Center
click on the link above to go to the turtle center

Loggerhead Sea Turtle nest from the story below.....

Mother and I took Olivia
to Jekyll Island for the 
Georgia Level 4 Clay Court
Championships over the last 
weekend.

On Saturday night, June 18th,
we took Olivia for a late night walk
down to the beach. The tide was
coming in, and it was very dark.
Though a near full moon was 
scheduled, it had not come up
in the sky yet.

No more than 5 minutes into the walk,
we saw a tall bearded man running
towards us crouched down yelling
in a whisper for us to crouch down!

We had walked right over sea turtle
tracks and didn't know it!

A Loggerhead was on the dunes at
that moment digging her hole to lay
her eggs....

The Georgia Sea Turtle patrol arrived
and with red lights that don't bother
a sea turtle, they measured the tracks
from the ocean. They waited until she
went into a trance like state, which
a sea turtle will do as they begin to 
drop their eggs. At that moment,
the sea patrol team rushed to her
gathering blood from her neck, tagging
her to track her later, measuring her
shell all while in this trance.

Within 20 minutes she was done
and began to cover the eggs, and
then she came down off the dune,
would slowly exert all the energy 
she had left, resting every 12 feet
or so until she had again reached
the ocean. And then....

she was gone.

Amazing!!!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment