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Narration: Loggerhead sea turtles lay about 700 nests
every year in the Florida Panhandle. We are relocating them in response to the oil spill.
When we relocate the eggs, you must very gently excavate them so we maintain the correct orientation
of the eggs as they naturally occur in the nests.
Video: Okay, and when I put them down, I need you
to just kind of hold him until I pick up the next one just to kind of keep him in place.
Great. Narration:
We pack the eggs in the boxes to stimulate their natural environment using native sands
from the beach, and we stack the eggs so that they touch each other.
Video: What you’re going to do is you’re going
to put it all the way in about to here and then we’re going to put…
Narrator: To ensure we maintain the correct temperature
during the holding of the nest, we insert temperature probes in the boxes. The probes
stay in the boxes until the nest hatches. After the eggs are excavated and placed into
nest boxes, they are transported by tractor trailer to the Kennedy Space Center where
they are monitored until they hatch. They are then released on Atlantic Coast beaches.
This rescue effort is made possible by volunteers like the Friends of St. Joe Buffer Preserve.
FedEx has donated the transportation of all the sea turtle nests from the West to East
Coast of Florida. As of early August, we have relocated 176 nests from the Florida Panhandle.
That’s over 20,000 eggs. The hatchlings of these eggs have a greater chance of survival
than leaving them to swim out into potentially oiled waters.