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Turtle nesting season has begun, and after the first sea turtle nest was spotted on Seabrook Island, the turtle teams with South Carolina’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and other conservation organizations are combing state beaches for sick, injured or lost turtles in need of assistance.

But, one turtle rescue group based in the Lowcountry with a reach that spans the globe says for them, it’s always turtle season.

“For the Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA), since we work around the world, the work never stops,” said TSA outreach coordinator Jordan Gray. “But as far as the acute turtle season in the Lowcountry, we’re definitely in it. We’ve been getting different calls about turtles crossing the roads and hatchlings being found in people’s pool drains and yards.”

While turtle nesting season primarily refers to marine turtles — like the loggerheads, found on Seabrook Island — the TSA typically deals with land-based and freshwater turtles. Turtle season runs the gamut for species, meaning even residents far from the beach may find nests in their yards and hatchlings in the streets.

Not all of these turtles are in need of as much care or assistance as some may think, Gray said.

“We get a lot of calls or emails about turtles who aren’t injured, and people are just wondering what they need to do,” he said. “We treat every call on a case-by-case basis and try to help them have the best end result — whether that’s getting the turtle back to its native habitat or coming up with another best-case scenario for the life of that turtle.”

As with many wild animals, more times than not, the best thing someone can do is to leave the turtles alone.

“That mother turtle came up and laid eggs in your yard, or near your home, for a reason,” Gray said. “Just release any hatchlings back into your yard, at the edge of the marsh — wherever you found them. Because you’re talking about animals that have evolved over millions of years, these animals know very much what to do without human intervention.”

But sometimes, intervention is necessary, especially in cases of injury, illness or other harm due to human influence in the first place. That’s where organizations like the TSA and the S.C. Aquarium’s Turtle Care Center (TCC) come in.

Marine turtles are often found in more precarious situations than their terrestrial counterparts, due to the conditions of the shores they hatch on. Disturbances near sea turtle nests in the sand, trash left on beaches and even bright lights from nearby buildings can lead to injury or disorientation.

“When they hatch, the turtles are looking for the reflection of the moon on the water, and if people are behind them with brighter lights, they could go in the wrong direction,” said TCC manager Melissa Ranly. “And aside from hatchlings, a nesting female wants to find a spot where there’s nothing that could endanger her young.”

When marine turtles do end up in trouble the TCC is equipped with a full rehabilitation center.

“We help rehabilitate sick and injured sea turtles from all over the state,” Ranly said. “We’ll get a call from the DNR and they’ll let us know about the animal so we can get prepared for intake. It’s sort of what you would consider a triage — we have to examine the animal and get a feeling for the extent of the injuries. Those first moments are critical, so we just jump into action.”

Their equipment allows the team to get instant results, and they can even run blood work in-house. Most of the time they find debilitations like dehydration or malnutrition, which can disrupt the turtle’s immune system. So, the first steps usually involve antibiotics and vitamins.

In more extreme cases, like being hooked by a fisherman or hit by a boat, the turtle may need surgery. In these cases, it’s even more important for those who discover the injured turtle to leave it be and contact someone who can help. Moving a turtle that may have a fracture or internal injuries can cause more harm than good.

No matter what kind of turtle you may have come across, whether it be sick, injured or healthy, there are a few crucial steps to follow:

• Call an expert. Turtle rescue organizations like the TSA usually have direct contacts. The TSA can be reached at (843) 724-9763 or at [email protected]; in the case of marina turtles, the TCC recommends contacting the DNR’s 24-hour hotline: 1-800-922-5431.

• Stay with the turtle. Beachgoers who find sea turtle hatchlings are the first line of defense, Gray said. So after calling the DNR, it’s important to remain where you are to help guide their turtle teams to the turtle in need.

• Listen to instructions. When calling an expert, oftentimes they may give you instruction on how to best handle the turtle you’ve found. In these cases, it’s important to listen to those who know better than you as far as caring for these animals.

Physical separation became an opportunity, not an obstacle, for Seabrook Island artist Deane Bowers.

In the midst of the COVID-19 quarantine, while she was brimming with emotions, Bowers began searching for ways to explore and express them creatively.

While her own artwork flourished from the bombardment of unexpected inspiration, within her blossomed a desire to collaborate with other artists in some capacity, despite not being able to do so in person.

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She was craving community and began developing an idea.

Bowers, who uses reclaimed and recycled materials for much of her multidimensional artwork, began searching her house for what art supplies she could repurpose for a group project.

When she tried to open her basement door, she was met with a stack of shipping boxes from online purchases. That’s when sparks flew.

“It was like the universe literally threw a box in my way and I was like, OK, there’s your answer,” Bowers said.

She started cutting up boxes into 6-by-6-inch squares, with the hopes to find willing participants she could mail them to who would then use them as their canvases.

The goal was to compile the resulting artwork together into somewhat of a cardboard patchwork quilt.

She called the idea the Together While Apart Art Project, and the finished piece is currently being considered for permanent exhibit by the Medical University of South Carolina and McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina.

“I knew from my own journey as an artist that by processing these events going on in our world, my creativity would help me channel them and I’d start healing myself and finding hope,” Bowers said. “I felt like that would be the case with other people.”

Bowers reached out on all the platforms she had access to, including on her social media pages and during a podcast interview with a Los Angeles-based artist she knew. She wanted to find participants both in and outside of the Lowcountry.

“I really wanted to find a community of people who wanted to be a part of something bigger than themselves,” Bowers said.

From late July until early October, she garnered interest from more than 30 artists across the country that were then whittled down to 19 from eight different states, as some dropped out while other obligations arose.

Bowers sent everyone two to three pieces of a box and told them to think outside the box.

“I wanted them to process whatever they were feeling, positive or negative, and told them to put that into art,” Bowers said.

Meanwhile, she began getting to know the artists who had reached out for the project.

She learned that though in Cleveland, Amy Lauria had a shared love of coastal art, made from her collection of stones, driftwood and beach glass from the shores of Lake Erie.

She discovered Statesville, N.C., participant Cynthia Webb was primarily a jeweler, not a painter, but was still willing to give the project a whirl.

She checked on California participants Nikki Contini and Rebecca Potts during the wildfires.

Everyone began chatting on social media, expressing their hardships during the pandemic and also offering support and encouraging words.

Then Bowers paired up snail mail buddies, sending everyone in the group a pre-stamped envelope biweekly that they could fill with whatever they wanted to send to their selected partner.

In the midst of widespread loss of life, Bowers saw before her eyes a story unfold of new friendships being born despite it all.

“We really became this socially distanced community, connected over this project,” Bowers said. “We all were sheltering in home and in the same pandemic boat, but took comfort in knowing we weren’t in it alone.”

In January, the last finished squares arrived on Seabrook Island.

“When I laid all the squares out on my studio table, I saw that everyone had channeled their heartache, their loneliness, their sadness, their anxiety, all into something positive,” Bowers said. “The synergy was wild.”

Frankie Slaughter’s abstract acrylic and Celie Gehrig’s colorful flowers were bright and childlike splashes of wonder amid the chaos.

Rachel McLaughlin’s piece “No Mud, No Lotus” (Thich Nhat Hanh) perhaps encapsulated the juxtaposition of positive and negative emotions brought on by COVID-19 the most succinctly.

“It’s a reminder that happiness always goes hand-in-hand with struggle and suffering,” she penned. “One cannot exist without the other.”

Charleston participant Cathy Kleiman painted angels in hopes that everyone would have a COVID-19 protector watching over them. But those angels also represented guardians watching over Black Lives Matter demonstrators as they marched for justice.

“I wanted to express that every Black, Brown, White person — whatever race, creed, color or sexual orientation — needed guardian angels watching over them during this time for unity, peace, love, justice, mercy and understanding,” Kleiman said.

After Bowers compiled the separate squares into one finished piece, she began offering it as a traveling exhibit to different galleries, museums and hospitals around the country.

The first to showcase it will be the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Institute for Arts in Medicine.

“Part of our mission is to enhance the healing environment, and we truly feel this piece will do just that,” said program coordinator Lauren Edwards.

The Together While Apart Art Project will be in Alabama until December and then will travel to the Hickory Museum of Art in North Carolina for six months before arriving at the Medical College of Virginia.

It could end up in Charleston, a notion supported by the South Carolina Arts Commission. Community Arts Development Director Susan DuPlessis expressed the importance of reflections such as this on eras of hardship.

“What especially stands out for me is the idea that community could be created in 6-by-6-inch squares,” DuPlessis said. “It took an artist with a vision who said ‘why not?’ And she went for it. Now, her idea and the creative work of a number of artists who don’t know each other has been stitched together — literally and figuratively.”

Bowers said she wouldn’t mind the project traveling a little longer and heading out to the West Coast before settling down.

She hopes that along with a message of hope it also conveys a powerful revelation she hadn’t expected to discover during the pandemic: You can find and create your own community even if you can’t see them face to face.

“Together, even if apart, we’re better,” she said.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCIV) — South Carolina's Supreme Court again has ruled on the side of environmentalists in an enduring fight over the future of Kiawah Island's imperiled Capt. Sam's Spit, on which developers have long sought to build oceanfront houses.

In an opinion published Tuesday, the Supreme Court reversed an earlier ruling by the state's Administrative Law Court which tentatively cleared the way for construction of a 2,380-foot metal wall along the Kiawah River on the inland side of the narrow, 170-acre Capt. Sam's Spit peninsula.

It's the third time the Supreme Court has struck down prior rulings by the Administrative Law Court (ALC) that would've allowed Kiawah Development Partners, the group that owns the upland areas of the narrow peninsula, to build a massive erosion prevention wall near the banks of the river.

Kiawah Development Partners have been after government clearance for decades to build the erosion barrier along the river. It's part of a larger plan to construct a road and eventually 50 new beachfront homes on the peninsula. The developers their financial interests

But building on Capt. Sam's Spit isn't so easy. Much of the peninsula is protected against development as a "critical area" under the S.C. Dept. of Health and Environmental Control's Ocean & Coastal Resource Management plan. In light of this, proposals to build the wall in 2014 and 2018 didn't pass muster with DHEC, decisions later affirmed by the Supreme Court despite the ALC's rulings.

In the most recent attempt, developers took a new approach in their attempt to get the nearly 800-yard wall approved, putting forth a plan that would see the wall constructed entirely outside of the peninsula's current critical and protected areas.

Under that scenario, the threshold of scrutiny from DHEC regulators was reduced, and eliminated a requirement for the agency to consider the "long range, cumulative effects" of the development. The plan worked.

DHEC approved the new proposal, and also agreed with Kiawah Development Partners' assessment that development on Capt. Sam's Spit would be in line with the general character of the surrounding area since other portions of Kiawah Island and neighboring Seabrook Island had been developed — even though DHEC in past objections to development plans had described Capt. Sam's Spit as one of only three pristine beaches remaining along the South Carolina coastline.

The ALC then upheld DHEC's rulings, further arguing it was in the public interest to build the lengthy wall. The ALC argued public benefit was met because the wall could protect a particularly vulnerable stretch of Capt. Sam's Spit known as "the neck," located steps away from popular Kiawah Beachwalker County Park.

The Supreme Court hit back on this ALC decision, saying the decision was a "fallacy" because protecting the small area along the neck adjacent to Beachwalker Park didn't justify building the entire wall. Further, the Supreme Court noted the ALC in this decision ignored an existing permit approved years earlier that would allow for a smaller 270-foot retaining wall near Beachwalker Park to specifically address the erosion in the neck area.

"In essence, (Kiawah Development Partners) seeks to hold the protection of the park hostage until it is permitted to construct the entire wall," Justice Kaye G. Hearn wrote on behalf of the court in its majority opinion striking down the approval.

Additionally the Supreme Court ruled the ALC erred in upholding DHEC's reduced scrutiny of the project because it flippantly ignored the long-term potential impacts to the critical area that would be hastened by allowing construction of the wall and the road.

The most recent development proposal forecasts at least 28.5 feet of space needed to install the wall and a road on the spit . The river at the "neck" is currently separated from the protected critical area by less than 10 yards (approx. 29 feet), according to a 2016 measurement cited in the Supreme Court opinion. That distance was 60 feet in 2010, demonstrating the significant rate of erosion.

Thus, the Supreme Court reasoned building the road and the wall would leave less than a foot of buffer between the infrastructure and the protected critical areas. With the known erosion problem, that creates "a virtual certainty" the river bank will eventually erode completely away adjacent to the wall, thus eliminating the public's use of it and further threatening and likely eliminating parts of the protected critical area.

Lastly, the High Court ruled that the developers' motives for building the wall were inescapably related to economic benefits. By law, economic interests cannot supersede the public interest in protection of critical areas, thus the Supreme Court ruled the ALC had erred in upholding the permits for the wall.

“The South Carolina Supreme Court drove home, for the third time, today that it’s still a bad idea," said Laura Cantral, Executive Director of the Coastal Conservation League, which brought the fight against the developers to the Supreme Court. "The fragile piece of sand is no place for a 2,380-foot steel wall, along with a roadway, stormwater management system, and utility lines, which would have been devastating to such an ecologically sensitive and fragile landscape. Captain Sams is a valuable public resource. We are celebrating this victory, and we will continue our fight to protect Captain Sams Spit.”

Biologists and researchers have discovered that half of a declining shorebird species on the Atlantic is being supported by a nighttime roost off the coast of South Carolina.

About 20,000 whimbrel were confirmed roosting at night at the Deveaux Bank Seabird Sanctuary, off Seabrook Island 20 miles south of Charleston, during their annual journey north.

The S.C. Department of Natural Resources said it is rare that someone discovers a new-to-science bird migration spectacle, but it is even more rare that an encounter would be so close to a metropolitan area such as Charleston.

Whimbrels are large shorebirds known for their long, curved bills. They migrate yearly across the Western Hemisphere while facing threats of habitat loss and overhunting.

These birds spend winters on South American coasts and then fly thousands of miles north to nest and raise their young across the subarctic regions of Canada and Alaska.

They usually make one stop along the way to rest and feed in places like South Carolina to fuel their breeding season, DNR said.

In the past 25 years, the whimbrel species has declined by two-thirds across the Atlantic Flyway, so the discovery of such a largest roost — the largest known for this species — is important for protecting this rare shorebird.

DNR Biologist Felicia Sanders and a team of researchers confirmed that about 20,000 whimbrel were roosting at night on the island during their spring migration. In 2020, the team documented similar numbers.

Findings were published in Wader Study, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. And a team from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology documented the discovery.

“A lot of people were skeptical, but after tallying results from coordinated surveys by fellow ornithologists and video documentation we are certain of the magnitude of the flock,” Sanders said.

She said finding so many whimbrels on Deveaux Bank gives her hope that the tide can be turned for the species and other declining shorebirds.

Sustaining shorebird species involves protecting seabird sanctuaries such as Deveaux Bank. Seabirds seek large, isolated offshore refuges where there are minimal disturbances from people and predators. Few remain on the Atlantic Coast.

Deveaux Bank is closed year-round above the high-water line, apart from areas designated for limited recreation use. Some of the island’s beaches are also closed for seasonal nesting of coastal birds from March 15 to Oct. 15.

Sanders said it takes a village to protect places as important as Deveaux.

“The discovery at Deveaux Bank really shows the need for conservation efforts to deal with the pressures of growth along our coast and a changing climate,” said Laura Cantral, executive director of the Coastal Conservation League. “South Carolina is lucky to have the experts at DNR so that conservation decisions stem from good science.”

Dr. J. Drew Lanham, a professor of wildlife ecology at Clemson University, said when people think of the shifting nature of the barrier islands, they realize that nothing is ever permanent.

“And so it’s important for us to realize, to understand this discovery on Deveaux and to protect beyond Deveaux, to have these other landing spots,” Lanham said.

A roost so large stands as a testament to the state’s commitment to coastal habitat conservation, DNR said.

While sea turtle volunteers have been walking South Carolina’s beaches in search of nests since May 1, the official start of the season, it wasn’t until May 5 they found something to count.

South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) biologists and volunteers announced that a mother loggerhead laid the first nest of the season on Seabrook Island. Volunteers Sandy MacCoss and Lucy Hoover spotted a crawl and located the nest on the island 20 miles south of Charleston.

“Our staff and nest protection volunteers have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the season’s first nest marking the return of these ancient reptiles,” said SCDNR biologist Michelle Pate, who oversees the agency’s sea turtle nesting program. “We’re hopeful for a great season under the watchful eyes of our dedicated volunteer network members.”

Despite the complications of the 2020 season, which ranged from beach closures to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, it was a successful nesting year for South Carolina’s sea turtle population, with 5,560 nests laid. Because nesting exacts a high energy toll on the large reptiles, female sea turtles do not come ashore to lay eggs every year. This pattern results in nesting fluctuations from year to year – 2019 broke all records with 8,795 nests, but 2018 saw just 2,767 nests.

Overall, sea turtle nest numbers across the Southeast have trended up over the past decade, making biologists across the region optimistic that these threatened reptiles are beginning to recover after several decades of conservation efforts.

Four sea turtle species nest on South Carolina beaches: loggerheads, greens, Kemp’s ridleys, and leatherbacks. All four species are classified as endangered or threatened and are protected under the Endangered Species Act in addition to local and state ordinances. Loggerhead nests comprise the vast majority of the state’s total number each year, but 2020 saw at least one nest from each species and even five nests from a loggerhead-hawksbill hybrid.

Sea turtle season officially runs from May 1 through October 31, with hatching beginning around the start of July.

Sea turtle clutches average 120 eggs and hatch after approximately 60 days. Nesting females may remain in South Carolina waters and continue to nest every two weeks, laying up to six nests per season. Throughout this stressful time, the turtles also abstain from eating.

South Carolina beachgoers can help the state’s sea turtles by keeping beaches clean, turning beachfront lights out to avoid disorienting turtles, and giving all sea turtles and nests a wide and respectful berth when encountered on the beach.

Sea Turtle Nesting Season Reminders