Eleventh Turtle Walk

July 12 was the eleventh walk of this season.      

It was raining at the beginning of the turtle walk this morning.  Below, you can see the walker who does zone  5, in her raincoat,  just starting her walk too.

       

A rainbow over Island Beach Club

             

A false crawl, one of four found in our zone.  It was a little hard to see parts of them due to the hard rain we had during the night.

 

Melon boat!

       

False crawl

Rain was over.

A false crawl

A false crawl

False Crawl

I bet Kate & Allie had a great time gathering shells for this.

A washed over turtle!

      

Is Holly a lucky girl????

Flip!

What's left of a castle after a heavy rain.

      

I was sitting in the car at Tarpon Bay Rd Access and I saw this fellow getting all of his metal detector paraphernalia ready and walk out toward the beach.  This is where he was when Gary reached the end of our zone.  I didn't realize they worked under water.  Now I wonder if he found any treasures.

There were a lot of small shells strewn about.

A few nests that survived the tropical storm have actually hatched.  A few others that were due to hatch, but hadn't due to being washed over, have been dug to count the amount of eggs in each for documentation.  Very sad story, but it seems the sea turtles are trying to make up for it by working extra hard now to lay more eggs. :)

Below is a list of the sea turtle activity on our islands. Also included is the previous two years for comparison.

As of July 13, 2012:

Sanibel East-64 nests, 129 false crawls, 0 hatches

Sanibel West- 213 nests, 462 false crawls, 9 hatches

Captiva- 105 nests, 152 false crawls, 5 hatches

As of July 13, 2011:

Sanibel East-32 nests, 71 false crawls, 1 hatch

Sanibel West-204 nests, 311 false crawls, 12 hatches

Captiva-68 nests, 46 false crawls, 15 hatches

As of July 13, 2010:

Sanibel East-13 nests, 57 false crawls, 0 hatches

Sanibel West- 101 nests, 208 false crawls, 6 hatches

Captiva-43 nests, 102 false crawls, 5 hatches

Amanda Bryant

Biologist

Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation

www.sccf.org

www.facebook.com/SanibelCaptivaConservationFoundation

www.sccfseaturtleprogram.blogspot.com