ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 9, 1996 TAG: 9608090058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH
SOURCE: SCOTT HARPER LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
MEMO: NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.
On a busy stretch of Oceanfront beach, wildlife biologists Wednesday found a rarity - a nest containing 123 eggs from a federally protected loggerhead sea turtle.
Female loggerheads, like other sea turtles that drag themselves from the surf to lay their eggs, normally choose quiet, remote beaches to give birth. Resort strips with bright lights and tourists hardly fit that bill.
But Wednesday just after sunrise, a member of Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge's ``turtle patrol'' saw flipper marks in the sand at 46th Street.
Paul Charland, a biologist who searches area beaches for turtle nests, immediately sealed off the site with yellow police tape.
As a crowd of morning joggers and early rising beachgoers gathered, three other refuge staffers arrived. After digging gingerly through 2 feet of cool white sand, the team found the prize.
Its location was the busiest, and farthest north, of any sea turtle nurseries found in Virginia Beach, said deputy refuge director Joe McCauley.
The nest was the first turtle nest of any kind found along the Virginia coast during this unusually slow summer mating season, which ends next month.
``We're very excited around here,'' McCauley said. ``You just normally don't have sea turtles laying eggs in those areas.''
The team moved the eggs in an ice chest and reburied them on a serene beach at the southern tip of Virginia Beach.
In 60 to 66 days, Gallegos said, they should hatch. The newborns will later be released at a ceremony just before sundown in which they will stumble toward the ocean and begin their perilous lives. Only one of 100 hatchlings survives predators and the elements to reach maturity, he said.
Most sea turtles migrating along the southern Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico are protected by the federal government as endangered species. The loggerhead, however, is in slightly less trouble; it is classified as a threatened species, Gallegos said.
This year, an unusually high number of dead sea turtles washed ashore along the North Carolina coast, near Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. Virginia biologists said that die-off and cool spring weather may explain so few sea turtles nesting along the Virginia coastline, their northern migratory edge.
Last year, eight nests were active in Virginia Beach.
Gallegos suggested that the loggerhead responsible for the 46th Street nest also tried to come ashore last week, near Fort Story. Last Thursday, Charland found flipper marks just south of the military base. But he discovered no eggs.
``It's very possible that she came ashore and got scared off, maybe by a light or a noise or something,'' Gallegos said. ``She might have swum offshore for a while and then decided to try again. And she landed here.''
The northern beaches at the Oceanfront have been patrolled by refuge staff since 1992, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started paying for sea turtle research as part of its beach replenishment program, McCauley said.
The corps gives the refuge about $12,500 a year to hire two part-time biologists in the summer mating season. Each morning, they ride motorized beach cruisers from Fort Story to Croatan Beach, looking for scrape marks or other evidence of a turtle.
``I've been patrolling since July,'' Charland said. ``This is my biggest find - my only find, really. It's pretty exciting.''
LENGTH: Medium: 66 linesby CNB