Leatherback Sea Turtle Nest Excavation

Sea turtle researchers usually "excavate" a nest after it has hatched. This allows them to count the number of hatched and unhatched eggs, find any hatchlings that have not yet left the nest and, ultimately, to return the contents of the nest to the beach in order to nourish it. This video demonstrates the excavation that followed the hatching of a leatherback nest on North Carolina's Outer Banks in August. 2009. Please note that [1] there is no audio on this videoclip and [2] the majority of this video is "fast-motion" time-lapse, which allows us to condense more than half an hour of nest excavation activity into a few minutes of video.

The video is courtesy of Karen Fitzgerald, a volunteer at the Network for Endangered Sea Turtles:

http://nestonline.org

More information about the leatherback nest and about sea turtles in general can be found at "Field Trip Earth," a conservation education website operated by the North Carolina Zoological Society:

http://fieldtripearth.org/article.xml?id=1488

Category:

Education

Tags:

• north
• carolina
• outer
• banks
• sea
• turtle
• leatherback
• nest
• excavation