Sea turtles - My 1st excavation

I went to my first loggerhead sea turtle excavation this past Sunday. For those of you wondering what exactly this is...I'll give a little background info. ;)

A nest excavation is conducted according to state law after a nest hatches naturally. During an excavation, the project leader digs up the nest chamber. They take an inventory of the egg shells, which tells them how many hatchlings emerged from the nest and made their way to the ocean unaided. The project leader also releases any live hatchlings that remain in the nest, and those hatchlings then make their way from the nest to the ocean. 

I recently became aware of a turtle hospital we have locally and just so happened to find out about the excavations. Luckily, we live at the beach; so, I have already been to 2 excavations. There's something about these little creatures I love. 

Now....to the good stuff {pics} -- The pictures may seem a little dark and blurry. They're not the best of quality. We weren't allowed to use the flash on our cameras.

I went to the first nest on Sunday. Unfortunately, Brandon didn't get to go with me. He was nice enough to stay at home and take care of Brayden & Bailey while I went. 

I had a little walk to get to where the nest was. I couldn't believe all the people that were out there.

 The pictures above and below are of the project leader and her assistant going through the nest, taking inventory of all the eggs and seeing if there were any stragglers. I can't remember the exact numbers but there were 100 - something eggs that had hatched 3 nights before this excavation took place. Saturday....there were several more that hatched. Unfortunately, on Sunday there weren't any hatchlings left to go out to the ocean; however, there were eggs left in the nest....they were either space eggs (empty eggs laid to give the other eggs space), or eggs where the turtles just never really appeared. {Honestly, I don't know enough about this to even be trying to explain it. I'm just going off what one of the volunteers told me...so please forgive me if any of this information is incorrect. I'm sure there's someone out there that knows more about this stuff than I do....and if so, please share!!}

 Below: I took this picture so you could see the path the volunteers make for the turtles to make their way from the nest to the ocean. They make little sand dunes on each side of the path and when it starts getting dark the volunteers use flashlights to guide the turtles.

The lady in the volunteer shirt below was so sweet. I stood around talking to her afterwards and she was sweet enough to answer all my questions.

After it was over, I made my way back to the car. On the walk back, I saw another turtle nest.

Even though I didn't get to see any turtles, 

I was thrilled to even experience something like this.

Stay tuned. I'll do a post on my 2nd excavation soon.

The outcome was different from my 1st. You'll wanna make sure you watch the videos. :)'