First loggerhead sea turtle nest of season found Monday morning in Garden City, SC

Sea turtle nesting season has officially started in South Carolina.Photo byGarden City/Surfside Sea Turtle Guardians

Sea turtle nesting season has officially begun in South Carolina. The first sea turtle nest of 2024 has been discovered in Garden City just a few days before the season’s traditional start of May 1st.

Volunteers with the Garden City Surfside Sea Turtle Guardians located the nest earlier in the morning.

May 1st typically kicks off sea turtle season, but recent activity indicated that nesting was likely to begin a bit early. Last week, North Myrtle Beach volunteers happened across the year’s first recorded “false crawl.”

A false crawl is when a sea turtle comes ashore to nest, and doesn't find favorable conditions at the moment, and turns around and goes back out into the ocean to try another day.

The upcoming season is a promising one as there have been record numbers of sea turtles nesting on South Carolina beaches over the past several years. 2023 produced 6,629 nests along Palmetto State beaches, the third highest total to date since record keeping began in the early 1980s, according to the totals from seaturtle.org.

Four sea turtle species nest in South Carolina: loggerheads, greens, Kemp’s ridleys and leatherbacks.

All are classified as endangered or threatened and are protected under the Endangered Species Act.