Travel is nothing new to sea turtles, but they aren't usually accustomed to boat and car rides.
But three late-in-the-season nests found in Garden City Beach are getting special treatment right now because of the chill that has settled over the region. Experts moved some of the eggs from the Grand Strand to Charleston and this week, when the hatchlings are ready, they will travel to North Carolina for a boat ride to the warmer Gulf Stream waters that sweep closer to the N.C. shore.
Loggerheads are the area's most familiar sea turtles.
The tropical-water-loving Atlantic green turtles, which have a later nesting season than loggerheads, don't often lay clutches of eggs on these shores. Loggerheads can be found as far north as New England, but endangered green turtles mostly stay down in Florida and the Caribbean.
"This is rare for South Carolina, so I'm sure [DNR is]putting a prestige on these nests," said Eric Koepfler, professor of marine science at Coastal Carolina University, who also teaches a sea-turtle course every other year in Costa Rica.
The S.C. Department of Natural Resources is arranging the tiny turtles' boat trip because "they aren't going to make it" if they head straight for the cold water hitting our shores right now, said DuBose Griffin, DNR sea turtle coordinator.
The Sea Turtle Conservancy says green turtles live in tropical and temperate water, where temperatures are 65 or higher. This month, the Grand Strand's water temperatures are in the mid-50s, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Karen Fuss, environmental educator for the Burroughs & Chapin Center for Marine and Wetlands Studies at Coastal Carolina University, said the cold water can stun the turtles and stop them from swimming.
"They have to swim, swim, swim until they reach where they want to be," Fuss said.
Fuss said it takes a lot of careful work to move a nest because the eggs cannot be jiggled and bumped, and they must be gently excavated from the sand and placed in buckets for transport.
Griffin said some of the eggs are at the DNR facility at Fort Johnson in Charleston to finish hatching, and she was trying this week to find a North Carolina research vessel or another boat that can get them out to the Gulf Stream as soon as they are ready.
While still in the sandy nests, 2 to 21/2 feet below the surface, the babies, just a few inches long, break out of their shells but take a few days to finish absorbing their egg sacs before digging out and making for the sea. That yolk will give them the energy to "boil" to the surface as a group, dig out, trundle down the beach to the water and head out into the currents.
DNR is letting the babies rest in a temperature-controlled environment so they can conserve the energy they will need to survive, trying to keep them as stress-free as possible.
Because nests typically take 60 days to hatch, Koepfler said the Garden City Beach eggs were probably laid at the end of September, and nests set that late often don't develop.
"Probably 1 percent of our turtle nests are laid that late, but the cold usually just stops the embryos from developing inside the eggs," he said.
Even adult turtles can get cold-shock, he said. For loggerheads, temperatures below 40 degrees can cause problems quickly.
"Because they are cold blooded, they rely on the temperature of their environment to help regulate their body temperature," he said. "If it gets too cold too quickly, their bodily functions can just shut down."
Baby turtles are at even greater risk, he said.
The people who work with the turtles feel very parental toward them, Fuss said.
Although she isn't working with the Garden City Beach babies, she has been part of turtle releases before, including one in which everyone involved - including the crew of the Coast Guard cutter that was delivering hatchlings to the Gulf Stream - was bawling as they sent the babies off into the wide ocean.
"It's amazing to watch them just swim off," Fuss said. "Once they hit the water, they know exactly what to do."
The Garden City Beach hatchlings will be vulnerable to predators, although they will be placed in mats of sargassum, a free-floating seaweed, which should provide some camouflage, Griffin said.
Once they have gone to sea, that will likely be the last anyone sees of them.
Contrary to popular belief, babies don't return to the exact beaches where they hatched - just the region, and that region can be 200 or 300 miles long - Griffin said.
They will eat small fish and crabs and free-float around the Atlantic for a few years, becoming vegetarians once they reach adulthood, she said.
Much of what's known about sea turtles is learned from those that are stranded on beaches, which means they are sick or dead, or from the females who come ashore to nest every three to five years. Males never come ashore voluntarily, said Fuss, who holds the turtle-monitoring permit for Waties Island north of Cherry Grove.
DNR began monitoring sea turtles in the late 1970s, and has, through a variety of groups, including volunteers and people with Coastal Carolina University, watched the beaches daily for nests and stranded turtles.
"We are all just trying to give these animals on the endangered list the best chances they can have," Fuss said.
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