Our Laguna Key Team takes tremendous care to do no harm while excavating our loggerhead nests.
The nests are originally dug with a flipper, therefore width and depth is relative to the size of that particular nesting sea turtle. The hole is dug then, perhaps 12 to 16 inches deep. Mother turtle then positions her back side over the hole and drops her eggs. We call this a "clutch" of eggs and it looks somewhat like an upside down bunch of grapes, only, the eggs are ping pong ball sized plus or minus. Mother turtle covers her eggs with perhaps 8 to 12 inches of sand. She flattens the whole area and then sprays sand about covering a larger area, apx. 6 square feet or even larger. The previous chapter shows how we protected this nest.
We saw 101 hatchlings "boil" out of this nest 8/15 between 8:22 and 8:45. Sounds from the nest continued and team members stayed through the night with no further action.
8/16 at 10:55, 1 hatchling named "Bubba" guided by Rick and Jerry, found his way down the trench to the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
8/17 at 12:30 "Bucky" also reached the Gulf, well guarded, and swam away.
From the photo above you may note that rather than digging down directly above the remaining eggs or hatchlings, our team clears the sand from around the nest. This is a terrific way to excavate. Our method takes a lot more time but it allows the surviving hatchlings to adjust, gain strength and it affords watchers a wonderful view. We can actually see the baby turtles who were trapped, gasp the fresh air and kick off their shells. We stop whenever a hatchling head or flipper appears and wait and watch, as you see in the above photo.
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