The Hunting Island Sea Turtle Conservation Project recorded its 100th nest of the 2026 sea turtle nesting season on Sunday morning, June 14th. That’s quite a lot of nests signaling an average to above average nesting season this year, and many a sea turtle visiting the beaches at Hunting Island.
On Sunday, the program announced that volunteers found nests 99, 100 AND nest 101 during their early morning patrol.
According to SeaTurtle.org, last year, there were only 69 nests recorded at Hunting Island for the entire season.
In 2024, it took until June 25th for Hunting Island to record its 100th nest. And, while nobody is predicting how the season will end up on Hunting Island, it is still far off of 2023’s all-time record 195 nests along Hunting Island’s beaches.
In fact, 2023 was a huge season all along the Palmetto State’s coast; the third biggest sea turtle season on record in South Carolina.
A whopping 6,618 loggerhead sea turtle nests were found for the 2023 season on state beaches; according to official numbers kept at SeaTurtle.org.
Many believe that more females are coming in to nest in recent years and are believed to be breeding-age adults born in the 1980s when more stringent nest protection was getting underway.
Conservation does work.
As of Sunday morning, Hunting Island has seen a total of 101 nests, 32 more than the full season total of 69 from 2025.
Other local totals as of June 15th: Harbor Island has had a 38 nests so far while Fripp Island has seen only 40. Other local nesting spots are Little Capers Island with 40 and Pritchards Island with 23 nests.
Even little Coffin Point Beach on St Helena Island is having a huge season with an amazing 21 nests as of today, just 8 less than its record of 29 nests recorded in all of 2020.
Hilton Head’s beaches have seen 175 nests, and there have been 29 found on Daufuskie Island.
Last year, these local Beaufort-area sea island spots, including Lands End beach on St. Helena Island and even Parris Island, accounted for a season total of 620 sea turtle nests. In a record setting 2019, they accounted for 1,197 sea turtle nests which made up a full 14% of all nests found in the Palmetto State, according to SCDNR.
With a little over 6 weeks left in the nesting season, we can’t wait to see what totals 2026 will bring.
Where there’s a sea turtle…..there’s a way. And sea turtles definitely dig Hunting Island.
