Tracks on the beach made by a female sea turtle leaving the ocean to lay her eggs/NPS

The number of sea turtle nests recorded in Cape Hatteras National Seashore this year has surpassed the record set just one year ago. As of Aug. 10, resource management staff counted 310 sea turtle nests, with additional new nesting expected. In 2015, the park recorded 289 nests.

Each spring and summer, female sea turtles – loggerhead, green, and the occasional leatherback or Kemp’s ridley – make a brief trip to the North Carolina seashore to nest. Loggerhead sea turtles are the most common nesting sea turtles that appear at the seashore, comprising 300 of the 310 nests that have been recorded. An additional seven are green sea turtles. Nests in the park comprise nearly 20 percent of the 1,555 nests currently reported in all of North Carolina.

If you see sea turtle tracks, nesting activity, or hatchlings, notify park biologists by calling 252-216-6892.

Park biologists closely monitor the beach for sea turtle nesting activity and actively monitor nests. Once a nest has hatched, biologists excavate the nest to document how many eggs have hatched. During an excavation, the biologists will dig up the nest, count empty eggshells, and collect un-hatched eggs for research. Live hatchlings are occasionally found during these excavations.

Nest excavations are an important way for the National Park Service to collect valuable data on sea turtle hatch and emergence success rates. This data is added to the turtle nesting databases for the seashore and the state of North Carolina. Visit seaturtle.org for more information and to track nesting activities at Cape Hatteras National Seashore and around the world.

Persons interested in finding out when and where a nest excavation or release of hatchlings will take place can call the excavation program hotline at 252-475-9629. Due to the unpredictability of sea turtle hatchings, notice of these excavations programs will usually occur only one day in advance, so check the hotline often.