As hurricane Earl works its way North (keep baking those cookies, Harriet!) beach erosion is a real possibility tonight and tomorrow.  The local news was reporting 10 foot waves at the Folly washout this morning.  Turtle Team leader Gary reports that this may have effects on our turtle nests 10-15, all of which are in danger of erosion.  The photo on the left from August 18 shows how much sand was deposited over the summer on the beach at Osprey– the steps are all completely covered by sand.  Hopefully, it’s enough to sacrifice some sand to Earl without too much damage to us.

Nests 7 and 8 should be inventoried tonight (although we may postpone 7, stay tuned) near Needlerush walkway, so we can get a clearer sense of what’s happening.  Earl is supposed to bring significant risks of rip currents, as well.

Tonight’s nest inventories are according to the preplanned schedule.  Gary reminds us of turtle protocol in a storm:  Keep people safe.  Be sure to have accurate GPS inventories of nest locations, and perhaps plant an additional stake behind the nest to find it in the event of a washout.  Only volunteers with an LOA should intervene in any way, and that intervention should be limited to reburying eggs found on the beach.  Early inventory (despite impending storms) is illegal, because it will skew the data.

DNR reminds us:

Yes, storms have an impact on sea turtles, but they have adapted their nesting strategy to accommodate for natural events such as hurricanes. Each nesting female turtle deposits several nests throughout the duration of the nesting season ‐ essentially hedging her bets to make sure that even if a storm hits at some point during the nesting season, there is still a high probability that at least a few of her nests will incubate successfully without being impacted by a storm. No storm season is a total loss for sea turtles.