Wrong ‘Jeopardy’ answer proves visitors have much to learn about Lowcountry sea turtles

Edisto Beach is still basking in its day in the sun.

It was in a “Jeopardy!” show clue on Monday night.

“I kept screaming ‘loggerhead, loggerhead,’ but he didn’t seem to hear me,” reads the Facebook post of one person who loves the quiet, old-school beach town between Hilton Head Island and Charleston.

Contestant Dave Mattingly of Old Forge, Pennsylvania, didn’t hear any of us yelling the easy answer to this “Hit the Beaches” clue:

“Edisto Beach, S.C., says no lights on the beach after dusk in summer to protect these sea turtles named for their big ‘heads.’ “

Mattingly lost $4,000 on the Daily Double clue, but scrambled to win for the second day in a row.

Here in the Lowcountry, people have been screaming “loggerhead, loggerhead” since 1981.

That’s when the first sea turtle protection projects began.

Among the first were projects on Hilton Head, Hunting, Fripp, Kiawah and Edisto islands, said Sally Murphy of Sheldon, retired sea turtle coordinator with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, who helped start the state’s network with a team of volunteers.

The word may not have gotten to Old Forge, Pennsylvania, but since 1980, the mantra around here has been to leave the lumbering females alone when they come onto Lowcountry beaches at night to lay eggs. She buries a clutch of eggs and leaves. They incubate for about 50 days, when bitty creatures crawl out on little flippers and follow the moonlight into the sea.

Or, that’s what is supposed to happen. If people, raccoons or coyotes don’t poach them. And if rubes don’t leave gigantic holes in the beach, or tents or beach chairs, to disrupt the crawl. A big problem is lighting at oceanfront homes, which causes the baby turtles to flap toward land instead of sea.

“Last year we lost 38 nests to this misorientation,” said Amber Kuehn, chief of the volunteers at the nonprofit Hilton Head Island Sea Turtle Protection Project. “That’s more than 4,000 hatchlings. We can’t have that again.”

This is Kuehn’s 20th summer of voluntarily combing the beaches, now working with 12 state-certified volunteers under a permit from DNR. They mark and monitor nests and spread awareness of the struggles faced by the federally-protected sea turtles.

Since the nesting season opened in May, Hilton Head volunteers have confirmed 159 nests (this time last year, it was 307, Kuehn said, with the drop-off attributed to the 38-degree ocean temperature over the winter). Edisto volunteers have marked 204 nests. Hunting Island has 56 and Fripp Island 58, but most of them are “false crawls,” when the turtle comes ashore but for some reason turns back to sea before laying eggs.

Society has tried to do better by the turtles, with things like local ordinances requiring “lights out” along the beach.

Thus, the “Jeopardy!” clue about Edisto Beach.

And, thus, 20 new turtle-shaped signs that have gone up over the past week at beach-access points in the Forest Beach neighborhood on the south end of Hilton Head.

Island artist Mira Scott, a board member of the Forest Beach Association, said private donors sponsored each sign by chipping in $125.

“We have weekly flips of visitors in all the condos and timeshares,” she said. “These people have no clue.”

The signs, produced by Sign D’sign in Bluffton, grab attention like the “NO!” signs listing beach rules never do. They say:

“Lights off 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. (the Hilton Head law).

“Red flashlights only.

“Fill holes on beach.

“Leave nests undisturbed.

“Leave only your footprints.”

Similar signs — maybe as many as 100 — are in place around the island.

This grassroots education and advocacy that started in Sea Pines with a group of volunteers called Turtle Trackers. That group has grown from five members to 90. And there are Turtle Trackers groups in Forest Beach, Shipyard, Palmetto Dunes and the island’s north-end.

They give out “lights out” stickers and red coverings for flashlights.

They hope that one day the screams of “loggerhead, loggerhead” will be heard all the way to Old Forge, Pennsylvania,

This story was originally published July 24, 2018 at 4:10 PM with the headline "Wrong ‘Jeopardy’ answer proves visitors have much to learn about Lowcountry sea turtles."