Sea turtles are starting to nest along Gulf Coast beaches. With more loggerhead sea turtle nests counted during last year’s season – from May to October – there is a growing likelihood of running into one on the sugar sands.
In 2009, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologists were worried about loggerhead sea turtle numbers. But in just two years, their numbers, predicted by the upshot in nests, started to rebound to historic numbers, said marine turtle management program manager Robbin Trindell.
Last year, more than 90,000 nests were reported in Florida — nearly 1,500 along seven Gulf counties from Franklin to Escambia. More turtles nest in the warmer waters and extensive beaches of South Florida.
Green sea turtles have had an amazing comeback over the past four years. Last month, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration removed them from the endangered species list.
In Florida, there are now thousands of nesting females, up from just a handful in the 1980s.
The larger numbers are encouraging, but biologists can only predict what that means for total populations.
“They will lay anywhere from three to seven clutches of 100 eggs or more,” Trindell said. “The trick is to understand what that means. Nests are used as an index to indicate the population is stable or increasing.”
Female turtles return to the same beaches where they were hatched to lay eggs.
When they do, FWC-permitted volunteers walk the beach every morning counting crawls, signs of a female laying through the night, and marking off nests to keep beachgoers from disturbing them.
It’s still early in the season, so nest sightings have been rare along Gulf Coast beaches. Officials at Gulf Islands National Seashore in Pensacola announced Thursday the discovery of the first sea turtle nest of the season at the seashore, the Pensacola News-Journal reported.
Every person who visits a beach during the nesting season has the responsibility not to disturb nesting turtles, Trindell said.
“Now we have more nests on our beach and more turtles out there that need every citizen and every visitor to Florida to help mitigate the impact to those nests,” she said. “It’s really important to try and make it as easy as we can for them.”
