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One by one, with a hand as steady as a surgeon's, Lorna Patrick removes eggs from a sea turtle's nest on a Florida beach.

"If it falls, you probably killed the hatchling that's developing inside," said Patrick, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Patrick admits she holds her breath each time she takes an egg out of the sand and places it in the foam cooler.

Sand is delicately placed in the cooler between and on top of each egg. Patrick uses the sand from the nest, which is located just a few inches from the beach's surface.

This process is part of an unprecedented sea turtle relocation program. Moving sea turtle nests days before the eggs are to hatch has never been done before.

It is also the first time that wildlife experts had to deal with oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

"Shy of letting the hatchlings swim in oil, it's our best alternative," said Sandy MacPherson, the national sea turtle coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service.

"We're confident if they go into oil they're going to die."

Patrick is working on the second sea turtle nest to be moved since the program started. Ninety percent of the United States' sea turtle population can be found on Florida's beaches, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

It is estimated that 700 nests can be found in the Florida Panhandle, an area vulnerable to the oil spill.

"This is a huge relocation effort," said Thomas Strickland, assistant secretary of interior for fish and wildlife and parks. "As many as 50 to 100,000 eggs over the next six to eight weeks will be dug up."

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Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
signing off