South Carolina: Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge

The Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge supports the largest population of nesting loggerheads outside of the state of Florida. The 22-mile segment hosts an average of 1,000 nests a year which is more than the total number of loggerhead nests found in the entire state of Georgia and more than the number of loggerhead nests found in North Carolina and Virginia combined each year. Located twenty miles north of Charleston, the loggerhead nesting on Cape Romain is 25-35% of the nests laid annually in the state of South Carolina. The loggerheads that nest in South Carolina are part of the Northern Nesting Subpopulation which is declining, as seen by the 3% annual decline from 1980-2002. This is of particular importance because the subpopulation is considered genetically distinct from the other subpopulations that nest along the southeastern coast of the United States (Plotkin and Spotilla, 2002).