While on Edisto, we woke up one morning to find several people clustered in front of the house, digging in the sand.

Several members of the family (not me!) are early risers who frequently beat the sunrise by a couple of hours.  Apparently that is also true of the volunteers with the Edisto Beach Loggerhead Turtle Project (https://edistobeachseaturtles.com/).

Members of this search the beach in the early morning for evidence of turtle nests and call in for assistance when they find one. They found one in front of the house we were staying in.

It wasn’t hard to identify. Large, obvious tracks led from the ocean to the nesting spot, then back into the water. They were still very clear in the sand when I took a walk later.

The volunteers dug up the nest, counted the eggs, took one for further study, then reburied the eggs and cordoned off the nest area, marking it with shells. As I recall, they said they counted almost 170 eggs in the nest, which is near the upper range of a normal litter.

We were careful to give it a wide berth for the rest of our stay.

The odds aren’t with the little guys once they hatch, but I’m rooting for them.