End of Season

posted: September 28, 2019, 4:50 PM

With the closing of nest #103 earlier this week, the sea turtle season on Holden Beach is officially over.

The good news....this was a record year for the number of nests on our beach. We ended with a total of 105 nests, 11964 eggs and 8107 hatchlings into the water.

The bad news....the new moon “Black Tide” in July, the new moon “King Tide” in August, followed closely by Hurricane Dorian resulted in the loss of 19 nests due to flooding. The 105 count included 5 "wild nests' --these are nest we didn't know about but were able to find when hatchlings or hatchling tracks were found. In addition 4 of our "false crawls" turned into nests again when hatchlings were spotted. We did have some problems this summer too with fox on the beach digging up the eggs, we were able out smart the fox on a few nests by adding a fox cage on top.

The photos are of the closing of nest #103. See the photo section of this website for more photos that tell the story of this nest and the amazing survival of 2 hatchlings.

Photos courtesy of Terri Hufstetler.




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