SERENE DESCRIBED WATIES THIS MORNING.

Peaceful, quiet, beautiful. Memories of old.




These prints, a sign of the wild life on Waties

WATIES ISLAND HAS VISITORS

Jennifer Cormany, Department of Natural Resources, visits Waties along with Karen Fuss, Environmental Educator, Burroughs & Chapin Center for Marine & Wetland Studies, Coastal Carolina University.

Jennifer Cormany has been assigned to Waties and will be taking care of any issues Waties has. She will be collecting the data, answering questions and coordinating the transfer of the genetic samples throughout this season

Sherry Kelley, Sandy Frantom, Karen Fuss show Jennifer Cormany a different view of Waties from a dune on the Little River Inlet side which gives a better look of the island from a different vantage point.

A SAMPLE OF WHAT WE FOUND ON WATIES SATURDAY

Another beautiful sunrise!

Here is a picture of Sargaassum Grass for those of you who wondered what it looked like. This is the grass that the sea turtle hatchlings swim out to immediately after leaving the nest. Note the tiny little air beads. This floats and allows the hatchlings to remain near the surface protected while they rest and feed.

The red barnacles are Megabalanus Coccopoma Barnacles. They are non-indigenous to our area. The white barnacles attached are white tulip barnacles. We found this one Saturday with three live Star Fish on it.

A Crawl on the Beach

The only crawl on the beach today was... not a sea turtle, but what appears to be an Eastern Garter snake, and a fairly good sized one at that. You can read more info about these snakes at the link below.

www.snakesandfrogs.com/scra/snakes/garter.htm

WOW!!!!

Promised you the total number of sunglasses we, Keela and Jingles Wells, Paulett Johnson, Barb Demusz and Dave and I found on the two mile stretch of Waties this morning.

In the words of Keela Wells, "Matey, Tharr be 87 pairs of sunglasses in the booty. Arrggh!!!"

This total does not include the five broken ones, an additional 4 and the goggles we threw away.

Has to be an all time record!!!

WHAT A MORNING WE HAD ON WATIES!

No nest or crawl, but


we had an absolutely beautiful morning as you can see by this sunrise. The humidity and the temperature were down.


The tide was out and the water temperature was warm.








It wasn't just beautiful, it was full of some very interesting things.







We saw shells and Sea Pork,










Sea Squirts and Sea Stars





and sun glasses like we had never seen before.
If they weren't all so different, you would have thought that a crate of them had been lost at sea.


We would bend down to pick one up and spot three or four more. We even through the broken ones away. We'll post the number of sun glasses we found after we get the count.



With so much on the beach, we never got back to the shed till 8 a.m.

A FALSE CRAWL FOR WATIES ISLAND

While walking this morning, Sunday walkers, Steve Demusz, Linda Mataya, Diane Castrodale and substitutes Paulette Johnson and Susie McClure, discovered a crawl. The sea turtle went right up to the dunes near marker #9. This end of the island has many cliff like dunes this year.

Maybe it was a good thing it wasn't a nest; this didn't look like the best spot along the beach (and a long walk for us volunteers too).

The crawl measured 2 ft 6 inches across. The nest site looked very promising but the probing did not reveal a nest. The last sea turtle activity on Waties was June 1st with a nest between Marker 1 & 2.

WATIES ISLAND HAS A NEST!!

The sea turtle nesting season has started on Waties Island this first day of June!!! The crawl was located between markers #1 and #2. There was a lot of loose sand thrown at the nesting site, almost as if there was a light drizzle. Her crawl back out continued for a bit over the incoming crawl. We knew from the large difference between the incoming crawl and the outgoing crawl that something must have happened.

It took us awhile, but with Steve's expertise at finding the nesting site, there it was right up there at the base of the dune!! The perfect spot for a nest.

After we located the nest, the DNA sample was taken, the nest caged and marked and the crawl measured (2 ft., 8 in.)

It was a busy morning between Waties and NMB and hopefully only just the beginning of what the season will bring.