Atlantic Loggerhead Nesting 79 



from 18 May to the first week of June. From June through most of July 

 nesting activity was roughly at the same level, but the numbers of nests 

 laid per night varied considerably. In the last week of July nesting activity 

 started to decrease until the end of the season in late August. 



S. R. Hopkins of the South Carolina Wildlife and Marine Resour- 

 ces Department, in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 

 conducted a loggerhead study from 1977 (Hopkins et al. 1979) to 1979 

 on a 3 km section of the Cape Island beach. She found that 5.8% of 209 

 natural nests (nests not placed in the hatchery) hatched successfully in 

 1979 (Hopkins, pers.comm.). With this percentage of natural nests 

 hatching, we can calculate natural loggerhead productivity for 1979 at 

 Cape Island. We determined that the mean clutch size was 117, 

 (SD = ± 4.31, N = 393), and that an average of 74.4% (N=10) of the 

 eggs in each clutch hatched. With 5.8% of 714 nests (379 of the total 

 1,093 nests were transplanted) hatching successfully, the number of 

 hatchlings produced from natural nests was estimated to be 3,605. 



Hatchery Program 



Loggerhead turtle hatcheries have been used since at least 1965. 

 The early hatcheries were designed to protect eggs and hatchlings from 

 raccoons and crabs (Richardson 1978). In addition to this function, 

 though, the Cape Island hatchery included eggs from nests that would 

 have been destroyed by beach erosion or saltwater inundation produced 

 by winds and tides. 



At the end of the 1979 nesting season the hatchery contained 379 

 nests, the first six placed there on 29 May and the last three on 16 

 August. The first hatchlings were released from the enclosure on 28 July 

 and the last of the season on 3 September. The incubation period in the 

 hatchery was about 65 days, but could not be precisely determined since 

 tracks of the hatchlings made it difficult to determine from which nest 

 they emerged. Hopkins (unpublished data) observed that the incubation 

 period for natural nests on Cape Island averaged 65.3 days in 1979. 



The hatchery and dune system of Cape Island were severely dam- 

 aged on 4 September by 50 to 60 mph winds produced by Hurricane 

 David and the occurrence of a 2.1 m spring tide. Prior to the hurricane, 

 1 17 nests hatched successfully in the enclosure. An average of 87.0 hatch- 

 lings emerged from each nest, resulting in the production and release of 

 10,185 hatchlings. From 1965 to 1976, the hatchery at Little Cumber- 

 land Island, Georgia, produced an average of 65 hatchlings /nest (Richardson 

 1978). We hand-released about 8,000 turtles from the hatchery, and 

 about 2,200 hatchlings were self-released at night through a tunnel con- 

 structed from hatchery to beach. 



Morning releases of hatchlings near the hatchery site were quickly 

 discovered by Laughing Gulls, Larus atricilla, and Herring Gulls, L. 



