With all the beach renourishment happening this summer on Isle of Palms, one often-hidden gem is being looked after even more than usual: the island’s sea turtles and their nesting sites.
And until the last grain of beach sand is placed this autumn by Marinex Construction of North Charleston, every one of these sites is being carefully monitored and checked by members of the all-volunteer Island Turtle Team and work crews to ensure their current and long-term safety.
“We’re keeping watch on a total of 59 nesting sites – 42 on IOP and another 17 on Sullivan’s Island,” said project leader Mary Pringle, now in her 29th year with the team. “And during beach renourishment, protecting them remains a top priority.”
Pringle pointed out that most of the turtle nests were laid in Wild Dunes before renourishment work began. Under the guidance of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, nests within the three project areas were relocated to the middle of the island.
Site protection is coordinated with respect to crew work on any given day. “If a turtle enters the construction area, all machinery and lights are shut down until she leaves,” Pringle said. “If she lays eggs, the turtle team carefully relocates them to a safe incubation site. Although nesting during construction is rare, crews are prepared to respond.”
The extra focus, however, is not far removed from the team’s regular efforts.
Every day at dawn, from May 1 through mid-August, members patrol all beaches looking for new sea turtle tracks, checking nests for overnight hatching and monitoring for threats such as ghost crabs, sand buildup and erosion.
But Pringle said that this summer’s beach renourishment – which includes placing 2.5 million cubic yards of beach-quality sediment along up to 19,200 linear feet of shoreline on the two ends of the island – is giving the team a chance to go the extra mile.
“We were directed by SCDNR to relocate any nests that were laid within the renourishment project areas of the island,” she said. “Nearly 75% of the nests – 30 out of the 42 – were laid within those areas and had to be carefully relocated before thousands of cubic yards of sand were pumped on top of them. So, it’s been a busy season for our members.”
Busy, but rewarding. So far, efforts between team members and Marinex work crews have been just this side of stellar – such that Pringle indicated the environment for the hatchlings is in some ways better than when the sand placement began.
“Nests normally take 45 to 60 days of incubation before producing hatchlings – which need a dark and quiet beach to survive,” she said. “If there are lights on the beach other than that from the moon, stars or white foam on the breakers, they can become disoriented and head the wrong way, get lost and die before they reach the ocean. Instead, because of all the coordinated efforts, the baby turtles have come and gone as if there were no beach renourishment going on at all.”
All of which points to a long-awaited resurgence in the island’s sea turtle population – one that is likely to last for a while.
“Before we started nest protection, only one in 10,000 hatchlings survived until adulthood to reproduce,” Pringle said. “Scientists believe this is not the case anymore. It takes 25 to 30 years for a hatchling to become an adult. With human threats and predation from raccoons, coyotes and all kinds of marine predators eating them in the ocean, the population was decreasing. But the eggs we protected in the 1990s are now adults, and the DNA samples we’ve taken from our nests since 2012 show that new females are entering the nesting population each year. So, it’s good to see these results that make all the work worthwhile.”
By L. C. Leach III
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