COLUMBIA, S.C. – Biologists who tried to save imperiled sea turtles at Cape Island last summer have grim news: Nearly 9,000 baby turtles died after hurricanes raked the coast.

Despite efforts to protect the loggerhead turtles, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that just 62 percent of the eggs hatched following hurricanes and tropical storms at the undeveloped barrier island north of Charleston.

In a normal year, about 80 percent of the island’s eggs would hatch, the service said.

Cape Island, in the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, is one of the most important sea turtle nesting sites in South Carolina. About one-third of the nests established in the state are built in the sand dunes of Cape Island.

This year’s losses mark the worst sea turtle hatching season in about five years.

“If we didn’t have hurricanes last summer, we probably would have produced many more hatchlings,” said federal biologist Sarah Dawsey, who spent hours in sweltering summer heat in August trying to free turtle eggs from mounds of excess, storm-driven sand.

Dawsey and Sally Murphy, a loggerhead researcher with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, said losing turtles at Cape Island was particularly painful in 2004.

Loggerhead sea turtles laid far fewer nests from Florida to North Carolina than they typically do during the summer.

Overall in South Carolina, only about 1,100 nests were laid in 2004; in recent years, between 2,000 and 3,000 nests have been established, Murphy said. Murphy thinks cooler ocean temperatures chilled breeding among loggerhead sea turtles.

The loggerhead is the only sea turtle to nest regularly on South Carolina beaches, where it deposits eggs in sand dunes.

The reptile, which can live 75 years and weigh 350 pounds, is listed by the federal government as a threatened species because of dwindling populations. It is found from the Florida Keys to Virginia during the summer, its prime nesting season. For more than two decades, loggerhead populations have declined as a result of pollution, overdevelopment of beaches and commercial fishing.

That’s part of the reason Dawsey spent days last summer trying to dig out sea turtles buried under deep sand from hurricanes Charley, Ivan and Gaston. Although sea turtles bury eggs in the sand, excessive sand can smother turtles that hatch because they can’t reach the surface as easily.

Dawsey said the work she and others did to free baby sea turtles was worth it, even though many of the infant reptiles apparently were smothered or drowned from over-washing waves.

“You would find either dead turtles in the nests or eggs that had completely developed, but had drowned,” she said.

“When things like this happen, it’s disappointing, but you do all you can do. You just have to accept this.”

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(c) 2004, The State (Columbia, S.C.).

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

AP-NY-12-29-04 0601EST

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