relatively inexpensive compared to tagging and results in no 

 disturbance at night to nesting turtles. Morning ground surveys 

 may be easily combined with projects designed to document nest 

 fate and implement or evaluate beach management activities such 

 as predator control. If resources are limited and surveys cannot 

 be made daily to gain a total nest count, several alternative 

 methods are available. First, nests can be marked to obtain a 

 sample of the nesting effort. Second, if nests are marked, then 

 nests laid since the last survey can be determined. Thus, by the 

 second method the beach can be surveyed every other day or every 

 third day depending upon local weather conditions, and a total 

 nest count can still be obtained. In this latter case, track 

 duration under different weather conditions would have to be 

 determined to ensure that the survey schedule was often enough to 

 find all tracks. 



Typically, tracks may be evaluated as resulting in egg 

 laying by the presence of a body pit, thrown sand, signs of 

 covering and/or uprooted vegetation. The majority of tracks will 

 either have no body pit and are thus a false crawl (non-nesting 

 emergence) , or are stereotypic nesting sites. A small percentage 

 of tracks will have an atypical or unclear body pit and should be 

 carefully probed to determine whether an egg chamber is present. 



Some differences between data on turtle tagging surveys and 

 data on ground surveys of tracks should be expected. For 

 example, false crawls which are low on the beach may be washed 

 out prior to the ground track survey. Track signs may also be 

 obliterated by wind or rain, and a few nests may not be located 

 despite extensive probing. In addition, tracks may become 

 impossible to interpret on high density nesting beaches where 

 body pits are disturbed by other nesting turtles. Tracks can 

 also be difficult to read on beaches with extensive rock or on 

 beaches consisting of shells. However, in most cases, careful 

 observation, thorough probing and early morning surveys lead to 

 an accurate appraisal of nesting effort. The major disadvantage 

 of ground surveys of tracks is that they provide limited 

 information on nesting turtles as a group or as individuals. The 

 major research needs of ground surveys is how to standardize 

 surveys and how to compare surveys conducted at different daily 

 frequencies. We need to evaluate the utility of ground surveys 

 for monitoring the status and trends of populations and the value 

 of ground surveys for extrapolating and verifying aerial beach 

 surveys . 



Monitoring Hatching Success 



Surveys to monitor hatching success may be conducted 

 independently or along with ground surveys of nesting. Nests 

 should be marked so that they can be monitored during the entire 



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