Published: Thursday, August 9, 2012 at 12:03 p.m. Last Modified: Thursday, August 9, 2012 at 12:03 p.m.

Beginning Monday, Ginnie and Tom Stapelfeld will spend their evenings on the sand in Carolina Beach. They'll set up beach chairs and sit for hours, chatting, counting shooting stars and satellites and waiting to meet their babies around 100 loggerhead sea turtles, who at any time in the next week could hatch and emerge from the sand.

"We try to sit before. We want to sit before. We want to be there," said Ginnie, who lives in Monkey Junction and volunteers with the Pleasure Island Sea Turtle Project, which monitors turtle nests on Carolina and Kure Beaches from May through October. "Honestly, it's kind of like waiting for a human to be born. You don't know when it's coming."

Nest time is at a premium for volunteers in Carolina Beach, where the first half of nesting season produced just six loggerhead nests, a number project officials said was "about average." But as of July 31, North Carolina beaches had a total of 953 loggerhead nests, which could place 2012 among the most productive nesting seasons in state history.

North Carolina beaches serve as nesting grounds for loggerhead, leatherback, green and Kemp's ridley sea turtles, according to Matthew Godfrey, a biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. But loggerheads account for around 95 percent of all nests in the state, providing the majority of tracking and statistical data for nesting season.

"Based on seasonal data from previous years, about 90 percent of all the nests in a season are laid by July 31," Godfrey said via email. "Assuming this pattern remains constant for 2012, we should receive about 1,058 loggerhead nests ... by the end of this season."

That's second only to 1999, when Tar Heel State beaches played host to 1,140 loggerhead nests, Godfrey said, adding that at this point, the 2012 projections are largely hypothetical.

"It's very difficult to say," he said. "We just don't know. I'm reluctant to say what it's going to be without actually waiting to see what it's going to be."

Thus far, 336 sea turtle nests have been laid on beaches in the Cape Fear region; 326 of those are loggerheads. The vast majority of those eggs remain unhatched, as incubation periods are stretching longer this year for all species a development most likely due to fluctuating sand temperatures, said Nancy Busovne, director of the Pleasure Island Sea Turtle Project.

"The school of thought and it is just a theory is that at the beginning of the season, in late May and early June, it was unseasonably cool and very rainy," said Busovne, who has been involved with the sea turtle project for 11 years. "That may have contributed to it. This has definitely been a statewide phenomenon."

More:

Area beaches expecting bumper crop of turtle hatchlings