Excavation day.

So today was mine and Sarah's second attempt at excavation of a hatched turtle nest. To be precise it was Sarah's third excavation and my second. To be honest, I wasn't going to even write about it because it was so nasty the first time. I was simply going to put a link to Sarah's blog because she had written about it earlier.

However, after today, this may have changed a little bit. Today we had to excavate two nests that hatched two days ago. The first nest contained two live hatchlings which was amazing, and the second wasn't nearly as gnarley as the first which gave me hope for future excavations.

Basically, excavations of the nests are done after they have either passed their incubation date by a certain amount of time, or if they show signs of hatchings - ie. hatchling tracks coming from a big hole in the sand that looks like a volcano - we excavate after two days. The excavations happen in order to check the nest success.

What it involves is first finding the "volcano" where the nest erupted, and then digging down with your hands until you reach the egg chamber. Sarah has been really good at this - me not so much. It generally smells really awful and in some cases there are a lot of natural predators - ie. maggots - helping the decomposition process of the unhatched eggs. 

What the volcano like once the digging process
has begun.

Once we reach the egg chamber we take out the eggs and separate them into different piles - shells that are larger than 50%, yolkless eggs and unhatched eggs. After that we have to check the stage of development of the unhatched eggs...this is generally not too pleasant either, but Sarah and I agreed that if she dug I would check egg status.

Pictures from our first attempt at excavation -
it may look like I am digging here, but Sarah was in
with her ankles hanging out by the end of it!

Eggies separated into piles - from the top down,
unhatched eggs, shells greater than 50%, and
yolkless eggs.

Our first little friend as they returned to sea!

What above all makes it all worth it though, is the chance to see live hatchlings. In our very first excavation there was one little leatherback still buried in the nest, trying hard to make its way out. Today there were two in one nest which was even more awesome because it was just the two of us working on the excavations. We then named one Kirstin and one Sarah as we watched them go into the sea - a bit narcissistic, yes, but after excavating the nests it was the best part of the whole thing.

A special thanks to Melissa Coakley for taking these pictures. 
Check out her website for more: www.snakehuntingchick.com