VIRGINIA BEACH — Shortly after 11 p.m. Wednesday, tiny turtles began emerging from the sand. First, one head popped up; then, the flippers churned. Then, in a slow boiling of sand, nearly 100 brothers and sisters followed, pushing up and out.
For a handful of volunteer sitters huddled around the nest at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, the event was one for the record books.
The rare green sea turtle hatchlings, shepherded into a rushing ocean tide by vigilant humans, are the first documented to hatch from a nest in Virginia.
“It was incredible,” said Virginia Beach resident Matthew Lighthart, one of the nest sitters. “There’s not a lot I can compare it to. I don’t have kids myself, but I think it’s something like that.”
In about 45 minutes, 99 turtles, no longer than 3 inches from head to tail, surfaced. By midnight, they were on their own, swimming furiously on a 40-mile journey to the Gulf Stream, starting a life in which the odds of surviving to adulthood are estimated at 1 percent or less.
The hatchlings emerged 58 days after their mother laid 120 eggs on the beach along a stretch of vacation cottages in Sandbridge. Wildlife biologists moved the eggs to a safer spot, protected by a wire-mesh cage behind the dunes.
Volunteer nest sitters Matthew and Elizabeth Lighthart sit near the nest Monday night.
The first sign that the turtles were breaking through their leathery egg casings came Sunday, with a slight depression in the sand above the nest.
Biologists spent three anxious nights before the hatchlings finally emerged. Loggerhead turtles, which regularly nest on southern Virginia beaches, usually emerge from their nests within 24 to 48 hours of the first telltale sign.
“It was a relief,” said John Gallegos, the refuge’s senior biologist. “We didn’t want to be a failure with the only green sea turtle nest in Virginia.”
The turtles usually hatch from their eggs at night, often past midnight. Lighthart, an information specialist at the city’s Princess Anne Library, and his wife, Elizabeth, began the vigil Monday, when volunteers got drenched in a storm that “rained sideways.”
“Have you ever stared at something for hours and you think it’s going to move but it doesn’t?” Lighthart said of the wait.
But the payoff was sweet.
“All of a sudden, the sand moves, and a head pops out, and they start pouring out of there,” he said. “This was really cool to see.”
As the turtles popped out of the sand, the nest sitters, wearing gloves, placed the hatchlings in two ice coolers lined with moist sand. Then the volunteers walked the coolers to the beach and released the turtles at the high-tide line.
From there, the turtles had to crawl about 100 feet to the ocean. Some, attracted by the faint glow of light from Sandbridge to the north, had to be re-directed toward the tide.
Biologists view this trek down the beach as critical. The hatchlings are thought to “imprint” the beach into their systems, enabling them to return as adults to nest, Gallegos said.
The turtles weigh up to 450 pounds as adults but don’t reach sexual maturity until they are about 20 years old.
Because green sea turtles in the Atlantic Ocean nest primarily in Florida, biologists had discussed releasing the turtles farther south. Instead, Gallegos said, a decision was made to let nature take its course.
The nest could be a sign that the range of the turtles is broadening, perhaps as a result of warming sea temperatures.
“If it’s a fluke, it probably won’t happen again,” Gallegos said.
“But if they’re expanding their range, we should let that happen.”
This summer has been prolific for sea turtles, said Dorie Stolley, a refuge biologist who oversees volunteers.
Besides the green sea turtle nest, female loggerheads laid six nests on or near the refuge.
Five of those nests have hatched, producing about 450 hatchlings. Since the 1980s, the refuge has recorded an average of three to four loggerhead nests every summer.
Reach Jon W. Glass at (757) 222-5119 or jon.glass@pilotonline.com
