![]() Then came a birthday surprise: Trevor dug a live, wiggling hatchling from the nest and then another. Brian Shamblin, an assistant research scientist at the University of Georgia who uses the uses the maternal DNA from the egg shell to genetically tag and track which female turtles are nesting and where along the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.Īt the second nest, a lifeless hatchling was the first pulled from the sand. The team seeks softer shell samples suitable for DNA testing and, while wearing gloves, places the shredded shell into a plastic vial. “For the most part if a coyote has gotten to a nest, it’s all gone,” Trevor said. Trapping helps limit the number of predators on the 5,000 acre barrier island, but their presence is still apparent in the tracks along the beach. There was evidence some of the eggs had been eaten by a coyote, one of the most common predators with racoons that threaten turtle eggs. Trevor began digging gently with his hands at one of the first nesting sites, feeling for the fluffier sand that chamber where adult loggerhead females lay eggs. Kaitlyn, Trevor and members of SCDNR’s Office of Media and Outreach disembarked on Otter Island to begin surveying while Meredith piloted the boat to check on nearby Pine Island. ![]() Only Otter, Murphy and Sandy Point typically have eggs that go the distance and produce hatchlings, Meredith said, and so are the only islands the team conducts inventories. The trips begin in about mid-May to locate nests and collect genetic samples, and then later in the summer transition to recording hatching activity to conduct inventories of emerged nests. The team, led by Meredith, makes as many as four trips a week during sea turtle season to conduct surveys of Otter, Pine, Cedar, Murphy, Morris, Bay Point and Sandy Point Islands. Helena Sound between Edisto Island and the sea islands of Beaufort County to the south. With Trevor at the helm, the 150-horsepower motor idled out of Mosquito Creek and pushed the skiff down the Ashepoo River to the south end of Otter Island, at the mouth of St. ![]() They loaded the boat with the necessary supplies that they would later be carrying down the beach: backpacks containing heavy red stakes used to mark the nests, plastic vials for collecting shell samples, latex gloves for handling hatchlings and to prevent contaminating genetic samples, and multiple 32oz water bottles collapsible metal wire cages used to protect the nests from predators, a small shovel for digging, and an aluminum probe to assist in finding nest chambers. and the team of Kaitlyn, Meredith Bean and Trevor Proctor began a familiar routine in preparing to launch the boat. That’s why she was hopeful, but perhaps not optimistic, about the prospect of seeing her first baby turtle on an outing to Otter Island in early August - on her 22nd birthday.Īn SCDNR truck towing a 24-foot Carolina Skimmer pulled into Bennetts Point landing at 7:30 a.m. “But turtles are kind of the special place in my heart.” “Now I love everything about marine biology,” Kaitlyn said. She is working her first nesting season since graduating from College of Charleston with a marine biology degree in May. From that point, Kaitlyn amused her family by amassing dozens of turtle figurines as she grew up. ![]() It was a path set by motion from a childhood visit to a turtle rehabilitation center while on vacation on Topsail Island in North Carolina. Department of Natural Resources Marine Turtle Conservation Program, part of a team that works to survey turtle nests and later turtle hatches on the six islands they are assigned. Nearly 1,000 miles separate Kaitlyn Roberts’ home of Springfield, Illinois, and the beaches of South Carolina’s uninhabited barrier islands that she has walked this summer. It was a birthday surprise born of a passion sparked years earlier.
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