My Life as a Turtle Mom

In the summer of 2005, I moved from the Northeast to coastal North Carolina. One day while chatting with one of my new neighbors, I learned that the beach nearby is a nesting area for loggerhead turtles from May until September each year. Newly retired and with time on my hands, I decided to find out more about loggerheads and how they reproduce. I contacted town hall, and a nice lady named Linda, who is in charge of the turtle nest program, gave me lots of information on "nest parenting".

Loggerheads are protected species. Each morning just after sunrise, town employees patrol the beach looking for signs that a turtle has come ashore during the previous night to lay her eggs. The mother turtle (adults can reach 800 lbs.) leaves a trail in the sand, a distinctive herringbone pattern, up to the point where she digs a hole in the sand and deposits around 100 eggs the size and shape of ping pong balls. The nest is generally between the high tide line and the sand dunes. When a nest is found, it is marked off with stakes and string, and a sign is placed there, giving the date that the nest was discovered, and warning people that there is a hefty fine for anyone caught disturbing the nest. In some areas, where foxes are a problem, metal fencing is erected over and around the perimeter of the nest.

Around 55 to 60 days after the eggs are laid, they will hatch and the baby turtles make their way to the sea. This usually occurs at night. The nest parents sit at the nest site beginning around 5 days before hatching is expected, to make sure the baby turtles are safe from predators and make their way safely down the beach to the surf. Large Ghost crabs can get the baby turtles, so it's important to keep them away.

My husband and I signed up to be nest parents for a nest that was scheduled to hatch around August 31 of 2005. Another couple, Charles and Nancy, also volunteered for this nest and we decided to take turns, the early shift one night, and the late shift the following night. About a week before the "due date", we dug a runway in the sand and edged it with a wall of sand about six inches high, from the edge of the nest down to the surf, to keep the hatchlings from wandering off as they make their way to the sea.

On the third night of our "nest sitting", we arrived at the beach around 9 pm for the early shift, with our lawn chairs, mosquito repellent, and flashlight. When we arrived, the nest looked just as it had the day before. After about a half hour, though, I noticed a slight depression in the sand. Linda, the lady from the turtle program, told us earlier that this is a sign hatching is about to occur. I called Nancy and Charles on my cell phone and told them I thought something was happening. They hurried to the beach, and arrived just as a tiny flipper poked up through the sand. Pandemonium soon followed, as a hundred tiny turtles erupted from the nest and made their way down the "runway" to the surf. This is called a "boil" because for a few minutes the surface of the sand looks like rapidly boiling water. Charles stood in the surf with a bright Coleman lantern perched on his head, a beacon for the babies to follow. I stood in the surf too, and felt the magical sensation of tiny turtles crawling over my toes to get out into the sea. By 10 PM, it was all over. We packed up our gear and left for home. The next morning we called Linda to tell her that our nest had hatched. Several days after each hatching, staff members of the turtle program dig up the nest and count the number of eggshells. We went to the beach to watch when they excavated our nest. They counted 110 ten eggshells, and 4 duds that didn't hatch for whatever reason. Out of that 110, very few will survive to adulthood because of the many predators that feed on the baby turtles.

We're told that we were very lucky to witness such a wonderful event in our first year as nest parents. We were nest parents again the following year, 2006, but after about two weeks of waiting for a "boil" the nest hatched in the middle of the night after we all had gone home. In 2007, Linda did not need us as nest parents because for some reason there were very few nests, and they were all spoken for well ahead of time. This year Charles and Nancy are "sitting" a nest again and it is due to hatch early next week. We hope to see another hatching, but it will never compare with that first magical experience, on the beach on a bright moonlit night back in 2005