Sea Turtle Nest Monitoring System

North Carolina WRC Sea Turtle Project

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Nests
1-5
6-10
11-20
21-40
40+

Beach Description

Cape Lookout NS
North Carolina WRC Sea Turtle Project

Cape Lookout National Seashore includes roughly 56 miles of sandy beach along the Outerbanks of North Carolina. The earliest records of sea turtle nesting in North Carolina come from Cape Lookout in the early 1970s. National Park Service staff have been monitoring and protecting sea turtle nests and hatchlings for over thirty years.


Year

The data presented here should be considered preliminary in nature. All data, figures and maps on this website remain copyright of the project coordinators and may not be used or referenced without the explicit written consent of the data owners.

Summary What does this mean Activity

DNA Samples Assigned: 37 (12.1%)
Unique Females: 37 (analysis incomplete)
Nests: 307
  In Situ: 291
  Relocated: 16 (5.2%)
  Incubating: 282
  Inventoried: 18 (5.8%)
  Lost: 6 (1.9%)
  Unknown: 1
False Crawls: 398

Estimated Eggs to Date: 4489
  Eggs Lost: 431 (9.6%)
  Hatched Eggs: 1416
  Emerged Hatchlings: 1389
  Mean Incubation Duration (all): 61 days
  Mean Clutch Count: 113.7 eggs (Relocated Only)

Mean Hatch Success: 44.3%
Mean Emergence Success: 43.4%
Nest Success: 4.9%
Beach Success: 43.5%

Last Updated: 2026-08-09 07:34:01 (5.4 hours ago)

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Significant Nest Losses
Egg Status Egg Losses
SpeciesNestsFalse Crawls
Loggerhead296375
Green Turtle1021
Leatherback11
Unknown1