The weekend of September 14th was supposed to be a relaxing getaway with my friends to Topsail Beach, just 45 minutes from Wilmington. That weekend, nature had other plans. A powerful storm moved through the coast, bringing booming thunderstorms, heavy rain, and flooding. The beach weather I had been looking forward to was short-lived, but what happened next made the trip unforgettable.
Early that morning, when I and my friends decided to take a swim before the storm hit, I saw something fascinating right in front of our beach house, a protected sea turtle nest. At first, it didn’t seem like much was going to happen, until I saw a worker from the sea turtle protection team checking out the nest.
Curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to ask her whether the turtles had already hatched and made their journey across the sand to the ocean. Her response left me doubtful. She explained that because of the violent storm the week before, they weren’t sure if the hatchlings had survived. The thought of those tiny creatures struggling in the aftermath of such a storm stayed with me.
Later that afternoon, a sudden storm forced everyone to take shelter under the nearby cabanas. As the rain pounded down, all I was thinking about was the nest. Have the turtles already hatched and left? If there are any left, are they still alive? When the storm finally cleared, the group of sea turtle protection workers returned to the nest. They invited me to watch as they dug into the sand to see how many turtles had survived and made it to the ocean, and how many hadn’t. I was excited and nervous. The team is legally not allowed to dig up a nest unless it’s the 75th day after laying, so this was a special opportunity.
The workers took about 30 minutes to carefully dig up the nest, and sort the eggs into what stages they looked like they were in. There had been 120 eggs in total, but only five turtles had managed to hatch and begin their journey of life. The rest had not survived. The storm’s relentless rain had flooded the nest, compacting layers of sand and suffocating the remaining turtles. It was heartbreaking to watch as they opened the unhatched eggs, revealing that most of the turtles had been fully developed, just days or even hours away from hatching.
I stood there in silence, feeling the weight of the moment. Two of the members of the turtle team had tears trickling down their cheeks. Seeing those almost fully formed turtles, so close to life, but taken too soon, was hard. The workers explained that normally, Topsail Beach has a 99% hatching success rate for the nests in this area. But this time, only 4% of the turtles had survived the storm.
As the last of the nest was cleared, I couldn’t help but think how a single storm could impact an entire generation of sea turtles. Just a reminder of nature’s unpredictability.