Gulf Coast sea turtle hatchlings are beginning their biggest adventure.
“They are about ready to start hatching,” Suzie Seerey-Lester said last Friday night about the area of Caspersen Beach that she and Mary Jo Perkins have covered for nearly a quarter of a century.
Perkins has done it for 24 years and her friend Seerey-Lester for 23 years.
“Four or five nests have hatched on other areas of Caspersen,” Seerey Lester added.
The section of Caspersen the two monitor four days a week for Mote Marine is an extra challenge this year — both for turtles and volunteers.
Beach erosion from storms has left areas with too little sand for the nesting turtles and no safe beach to patrol. At more than one spot, they must leave the beach and walk the road or only a bit of sand behind a structure to get to the next area where they might find a nest or evidence of hatching.
The first nests in their area were in mid-April, which means that they should see hatchling evidence any day now.
There have been hatchlings on others parts of Caspersen Beach, as well as on other nearby beaches. Mote volunteers and staff monitor Gulf beaches from the Venice Fishing Pier north to Longboat Key.
Coastal Wildlife Club covers the beaches south of the pier, including Manasota and Englewood beaches in Sarasota and Charlotte counties. They also cover a small section of Knight Island south of Stump Pass.
Zoe Bass, Wilma Katz and Carol Leonard are the longtime leaders of this group of 140 volunteers who are trained by Florida Fish and Wildlife.
That Florida has more miles of beaches of any state means thousands of volunteers are out and about all around the state from April to October’s end. The goal is to preserve the species.
It likely helped that humans were not building sand castles and leaving stuff at the beach until very recent times. Prehistoric creatures did them little harm.
These days (nights, actually, during turtle season), while some turtles are laying second and third nests, hatchlings from the first nestings are beginning their first big adventure.
Hatching out of shells about the size of ping-pong balls, the tiny hatchlings escape their shells to crawl through some 18 inches of sand to the beach surface. It is usually the middle of the night.
They head for the relative safety of the water in the Gulf of Mexico before daylight when birds and other prey might eat them.
That in itself is a big adventure for the little hatchlings. If there is a bag of trash atop the site of their nest, their adventure might end there. Or they might fall into a hole dug by someone trying to find a way to China but giving up and leaving the hole.
Light from windows of homes or cars is another distraction that could send them to their death. Lawn furniture left at the beach overnight and sand castles are other distractions that can prove fatal.
Perkins and Seerey-Lester cover more than a mile of beach but with a few extra entries and exits from the beach, it takes a bit longer. Since hatchlings might be found, they now also carry a bucket in which to transport hatchlings that didn’t make it to the safety of the water.
Once the sun is up, it is safer for the turtles to be taken home and kept in a cool shady area until sunset when they will be returned to the beach at water’s edge so they can swim into the relative safety of sea grasses.
“There have already been some hatchings on other sections of Caspersen but not the stretch we cover,” Seerey-Lester said.
These two volunteers have found three and four new nests a day in some areas, including at least four nests by green sea turtles, a larger species found more often on Mexican beaches.
“There are two nests (greens) side by side in one area,” Seerey Lester said. “Perhaps the two females hatched from the same nest. Since there is no DNA record for every single hatchling, we will never know for certain.”
Their coverage area is a challenge this year but they love what they do, even with all the detours. But then, the turtles in their area face the same challenges.
Because of other detritus at the beach, the volunteers often witness false crawls where a nesting turtle has headed for a nesting site and for some reason simply turned tail and returned to the water to drop eggs that will not hatch.
As for word of a leatherback nest that was supposedly spotted at a different area beach, it could be a nest with empty eggs because there may or may not be a male leatherback in this area of the Gulf. Males never come ashore.
There have been reports of leatherbacks along Lee County beaches in past years. Global warming might lead to their venturing father north in the Gulf.
Most leatherbacks in Florida can be found in Palm Beach County beaches on the east coast. Leatherbacks are as large as 6 feet in length with leathery backs.
They weigh from 500 to 1,500 pounds. Their crawl path would also be much larger than those of loggerheads, greens and Kemp’s Ridleys.
If you spot any turtles, big or small, nesting or hatchlings, give them space. Stay well away, lest you startle them and cause a false crawl or misdirection.
If you live at the beach or drive near the beach at night, consider your car lights, home lights, flash lights and beach chairs and more.
The beaches will be all yours again at the end of October.
To learn more about the Mote program, send e-mail to info@mote.org. Jake Lasala is the staff scientist and program manager for Mote’s sea turtle program.
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