Tracks show sea creatures have begun emerging from ocean at night on Outer Banks

Strange tracks have begun to appear on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, showing something big is emerging from the ocean in the night.

The trails are as much as four feet wide, and indicate the sea creature came ashore, only to mysteriously turn around and disappear back into the Atlantic.

This is known as a “false crawl,” and it’s attributed to massive sea turtles coming ashore, according to the National Park Service.

Cape Lookout National Seashore reported its first “false crawl” on April 29, several days ahead of the official sea turtle nesting season.

“A Leatherback completed a ‘false crawl’ where it came ashore but did not nest,” the park reported in a Facebook post.

“False crawls sometimes happen for various reasons, including the turtle seeing lights (headlights, flashlights, campfires, etc.) and movement on the beach or just the turtle deciding it wasn’t the right time or place for her. Why this one turned around we don’t know.”

Leatherback sea turtles are a threatened species in the Northwest Atlantic and rarely nest at the park, experts say. They are the largest sea turtle in the world, averaging 5 to 6 feet in length and 750 to 1,000 pounds, the National Park Service says. “Their lifespan is currently unknown, but they are estimated to live to 50 years or more,” the NPS says.

The Outer Banks barrier islands are also a nesting destination for loggerhead sea turtles, green sea turtles and Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles, officials say. The eggs incubate while buried in the sand for 50 to 78 days, experts say.

The National Park Services monitors the Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras for sea turtle nests, and it notes the numbers “have fluctuated greatly in the last 30 years.” Once located, the nests are typically surrounded by barriers to prevent them from being disturbed by beachgoers.

Cape Lookout reports park biologists found the first sea turtle nest of the season on April 30.

The park is about a 180-mile drive southeast from downtown Raleigh.