Biologist Lorna Patrick dug gingerly into the beach Friday, gently brushing away sand to reveal dozens of leathery, golfball-sized loggerhead sea turtle eggs. Patrick, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, carefully plucked the eggs from the foot-deep (30-centimeter-deep) hole and placed them one-by-one in a cooler layered with moist sand from the nest, the first step in a sweeping and unprecedented turtle egg evacuation to save thousands of threatened hatchlings from certain death in the oiled Gulf of Mexico.

Biologists begin to salvage sea turtle eggs in oiled Gulf. (2010, July 11). Manila Bulletin, p. 23.