Nests: Obstructed Nests

Obstructed nests are those deposited by the turtle while encountering obstructions crawling across and/or digging into the backbeach. These nests tend to be complex; that is, the turtle approaches the backbeach facing shoreward, finds an obstruction and turns, trying to get around it, and may wander along logs, along beach scarps, and across wrack before she finds a suitable spot to nest. She may dig one or more body pits and multiple egg chambers before finally depositing her eggs and going into a covering activity as she rotates clockwise or counter clockwise on or around the obstructions before crawling back to the sea leaving a complex record of her activity. It is not unusual for the turtle to abort nesting activity under these circumstances.

Loggerhead sea turtle nest [06-042] obstructed by skeletal trees, north end of South Beach. This turtle negotiated an obstacle course, nested, and returned to the sea along her entrance crawlway.	Loggerhead sea turtle nest [94-088)] obstructed by Spartina wrack on backbeach. The egg chamber in this nest is likely to be difficult to find, in fact, was found in area in forground inshore of board, not within the covering pit above board. South Beach at 4.586 km.

These nests may have wandering crawlways with many loops and often with the disturbed nesting area very diffuse and unclear. The turtle may deposit her eggs facing any direction after meeting obstructions. The egg chamber is often found outside or on the edge of the covering pit, especially when the turtle nests in Spartina wrack or in flotsam, beneath clumps of grass, or under or alongside buried logs..

Wandering crawlway of Nest [06-108] at Yellow Bank Bluff on North Beach. Wandering is an attribute often associated with obstructed nests.	Covering pit of nest [06-108] at base of Yellow Bank Bluff against palmetto root. Note numerous Raccoon diggings. Scale = 1 m.

Once finished nesting, these turtles may be so badly disoriented that they wander about trying to find their way back to the sea, especially in areas with low or reversed beach slopes such as washover fans. One such "lost" turtle wandered over 635 ft (194 m) in the dunes after nesting near the north end of South Beach in 2006 [Nest 06-010]. This turtle crawled back and forth, looped around several times, and was found on morning patrol exhausted far from the ocean. She was carried on a stretcher and returned to the sea. Her nest, deposited in a swale, was partly depredated by a raccoon (22 eggs taken) and moved back toward the ocean onto a seaward sloping dune surface. Hatching success was (34 of 104 eggs) 33% for this nest; and of those, 19 of the hatchlings were taken by a raccoon.