Port St Joe, July 12: Biologist Lorna Patrick dug gingerly into the beach on Friday, gently brushing away sand to reveal dozens of leathery, golfball-sized loggerhead sea turtle eggs.
Patrick, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, carefully plucked the eggs from the 30cm-deep hole and placed them one-by-one in a cooler layered with moist sand from the nest, the first step in a sweeping and unprecedented turtle egg evacuation to save thousands of threatened hatchlings from certain death in the oiled Gulf of Mexico.
After Patrick spent about 90 minutes parting the sand with her fingers like an archaeological dig, 107 eggs were placed in two coolers and loaded onto a FedEx temperature-controlled truck. They are being transported to a warehouse at Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre where they will incubate and, hopefully, hatch before being released into the Atlantic Ocean.
The effort began in earnest along Florida’s Panhandle, with two loggerhead nests excavated. Up to 800 more nests across Alabama and Florida beaches will be dug up in the coming months in an attempt to move some 70 000 eggs to safety.
Scientists fear that if left alone, the hatchlings would emerge and swim into the oil, where most would likely die, killing off a generation of an already imperilled species.
—Agencies