Talking Turtle

 I had a successful trip north to Pennsylvania to visit family.  Now that I am back, it seems the dog days of summer have definitely arrived.  It has been quite toasty here in Ocracoke.  With the heat we have been happy for the wind, which even now has not let up much.  I continue to walk the beach and have seen many turtle tracks this year.  

Here is one example of the tracks left by a sea turtle on the beach

Ocracoke is part of the Cape Hatteras National Sea Shore.  This is a United States National Park that preserves a portion of the North Carolina Outer Banks.  The national sea shore extends from Bodie Island near Nag's Head, NC south to Ocracoke Island.  This is over 70 miles of sea shore managed by the National Park Service.  Every year hundreds of female sea turtles return to the area  where they were hatched to nest and lay their eggs.  This cycle has continued for thousands of years.  The females crawl out of the ocean at night and lay their eggs, then return before the sunrise.  Nesting occurs May through July.  The first turtle nest here on Ocracoke this year was found May 14th.  

Here is a park service ranger I spotted one morning checking a new nest and marking it so it will not be disturbed by beachgoers.

These are the markers they put around the nests

There are 5 types of sea turtles that will nest along Ocracoke beaches.  The Loggerhead, Green Sea Turtle, Kemp's Ridley, Hawksbill, and Leatherback.  The Loggerhead and Green Sea Turtle are the most common to be found nesting here.  Sea turtles are quite large compared to land turtles, however, they can also be distinguished from large land turtles by their front limbs.  Sea turtles have flippers for front limbs while land turtles have feet with claws.  Sea turtles are long lived animals and females are believed to be near 30 years old before they reach maturity and lay eggs.  The loggerhead will nest about every two to three years.  They will have 2-4 clutches (nests) in a year that they lay eggs.  Each clutch can average about 100 eggs.  It takes about 60 days for the eggs to mature and then hatch.  The sex of the baby turtle hatchlings is determined by the temperature of the sand in which they incubate.  Warmer temperatures produces more females and cooler temps produce more males.  Since the Cape Hatteras National Sea Shore is near the northern most nesting grounds for sea turtles; we tend to produce a larger proportion of male sea turtle hatchlings.  States like Florida and Georgia tend to have a larger proportion of female hatchlings.

Another view of the roped off area around one of the turtle nest on the beach in Ocracoke

The park service drives the beach every morning looking for new turtle nests.  They mark each one and monitor them until the turtles hatch.

Park service ranger riding his gator down the beach in the morning

Here is another set of tracks I came upon one morning.  This girl did a small circle about halfway up the beach before continuing.

As I mentioned above, after about 60 days the eggs will hatch.  Baby sea turtles hatch at night.  They use both the slope of the beach and the moon light to help direct them to the ocean.  Motor vehicles are not allowed on the beach after dark until after nesting season is over (usually end of September).  You may walk the beach at night; however, you are asked to not use a flashlight or other light source and not have camp fires on the beach until after turtle season is over.  These lights can confuse hatchlings and prevent them from making it into the ocean.  

This nest is soon ready to hatch and the park service has erected some barriers to help get the hatchlings started toward the ocean.  The black plastic is surrounding the nest so when the baby turtles emerge they are directed toward the ocean right from the start.

The number of nesting turtles has increased since the park service started keeping track of them in the  1980s.  The most nests recorded happened in 2019 with a banner 473 nests.  This blew away the old record of 327 nests in 2016.  This year's numbers are not complete but I found one site that has recorded 208 nests so far this season.

Hopefully this year will be a successful turtles season.  It would be really cool to see a nest hatch, however since this happens at night and there is no way to know exactly what night it might be; I will not be sleeping on the beach.  Keith and I did take a sunset "scud" (drive around) on the beach with the Jeep just the other day.  We had to be off  by 9PM.  The sand dunes and sunset made it look like a moonscape.

Sand dunes Ocracoke beach

Usually around the middle of September the turtles will have all hatched and the park service removes the 9PM to 6AM restrictions on vehicles on the beach.  Until then we head off around sunset.

Happy 4th of July

 It is hard to believe it is the 4th of July already.  Ocracoke had some festivities for the holiday.  They had fireworks for the first time in a number of years.  It was a very nice show put on by a professional company on Saturday the 3rd.  They set them off from the ferry dock parking lot, so it was easily visible right from the bow of our boat.

View of the fireworks from the bow of Southern Style

There was also a sand sculpture contest on the morning of the 4th.  We went to check it out.  It was not very dramatic.  Mostly seemed like it was for the kids.  Quite a number of families were helping the kids build castles.  It was the busiest we have seen the beach here all year.

Tons of people were on the beach July 4th morning

Later that afternoon there was a parade through town to celebrate our country's independence.  People decorated their golf carts and the local fire company started it off with their fire trucks.

Here comes the parade

After a rain-out of a day on Friday, July 2nd, Saturday and Sunday were beautiful weather days here on the island.  We had a great weekend as far as the weather was concerned.  

Keith and I did a little fishing in addition to attending some of the town celebrations.  We took "Lab Cab" out Ocracoke inlet on Sunday thinking it would be nice out with fair winds.  I should have known better.  Even though the ocean looked nice from the beach, there were some fairly large waves rolling onto the beach.  This can indicate big breaking waves across the shallow bar going out the inlet.   And we found out this was certainly the case.  

We took the center console and there were breaking waves in the channel and I think I lost ten years off my life going out.  I have no pictures of the ride as I was white knuckle holding on with no spare hands to hold the camera.  Won't be doing that again anytime soon.  After getting out there, the ocean was nice, but we only caught one Spanish mackerel.  All that stress for one lousy fish.  We came back into the sound and were able to pick up a couple small blue fish and two more mackerel.  All total from Saturday and Sunday we had enough to load the smoker.

Picture of the sounder in the Pamlico Sound as we trolled on the inside.  There are certainly fish down there.

So it was a good weekend overall.  I am getting ready to drive to PA for a visit with my family.  Once back we will soon be getting some company on the boat, so things may get busier the end of July and beginning of August.  Just more fun to look forward to.