When Drayton Kappel watches her mother work to protect sea turtles on Folly Beach, South Carolina, something clicks inside her. "My love comes from my mom and how it fuels her," Kappel said. "And that just fuels me and just makes me happy." That kind of passion — passed down like a torch from one generation to the next — is exactly what volunteers with the Folly Beach Turtle Watch Program hope to spark in every child who visits their public nest inventories.
This week, the program held its first public nest inventory of the season, letting community members watch volunteers carefully dig through a nest after hatchlings have already emerged. The event gave people like Zeb Burke a chance to see what all that fuss is about. "In my mind, I was like, I'd better get up and hurry up to see the sea turtle eggs," Burke said. He wasn't disappointed. "One of the coolest things I saw today was the shells and the eggs of the baby sea turtles," he said.
So far, volunteers have counted 116 loggerhead sea turtle nests on Folly Beach this season. That's a strong showing, though still below the program's record-breaking 135 nests recorded by the end of last year's nesting season. The numbers matter because loggerhead sea turtles are listed as a threatened species, meaning they're at risk of becoming endangered if nothing changes.
During each inventory, volunteers gently excavate the nest after hatchlings have left, counting both hatched and unhatched eggs to gather scientific data. Then they return the remaining eggshells and eggs to the beach, letting nature take its course while preserving information that helps researchers track the health of South Carolina's sea turtle population.
Dave Miller, a permit holder with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Marine Turtle Program, said education is just as important as the data. "Sea turtles have survived many things," Miller said. "They've survived the dinosaurs, they've survived ice ages, they've survived climate change. They're not doing so well surviving us. And so if in even a small way we can tip the scale in favor of the sea turtles, we want to do that." The public inventories, he said, give him hope for the future of the species. "It's really rewarding. I love these, particularly some of the expressions on the faces of the kids," Miller said. "It's just awe. And I'm thinking that's tomorrow's sea turtle conservationist."
For kids like Drayton, the experience isn't just educational — it's personal. Watching her mother dedicate herself to protecting these ancient creatures has shown her that one person's care can make a difference. And on a beach where 116 nests hold the promise of new life, that message echoes with every small shell uncovered in the sand.