Despite the ravages to Southwest Florida's sandy coastlines from Hurricane Ian in late September 2022, the sea turtle nesting season that started just months later ended up setting records for loggerhead turtles on Sanibel and Captiva islands.
About halfway along this year’s sea turtle nesting season on the islands this summer Denise Juergens, who is with the Boca Grande Sea Turtle Association on Gasparilla Island, told WGCU: “We’re confident it is going to be a successful nesting season."
It was even better than that.
The Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation reported this week that they discovered loggerhead turtles created a record 1,177 nests on the two islands, while green sea turtles had a more normal nesting season with 24 nests.
During the entire spring-to-fall season, 27,368 hatchlings dug their way up and out of nests on the islands and made their way to the Gulf of Mexico.
A successful nesting season indeed.
End-of-season inventory
Sea turtle nesting season continues to the end of this month so beachgoers are encouraged to continue to watch out for hatchlings, just in case.
Meanwhile, taking stock of marked sea turtle nests on Sanibel and Captiva islands has started, usually several mornings after they have hatched. An inventory is an evaluation of the nest contents to help quantify the nest’s reproductive success, which is done by trained volunteers who excavate each nest and determine the fate of each egg.
“We wait a couple of days to inventory a nest to allow any remaining sea turtle hatchlings to emerge before removing or counting eggs,” said Jack Brzoza, a sea turtle biologist with SCCF.
The number of eggs in the nest is counted. The proportion that hatched represents the nest’s “hatch success,” while the proportion of hatchlings that made their way out of the nest to the ocean represents “emergence success.”
Nests that never hatch, or were never observed to have hatched but reached their full incubation period, are also counted.
After the inventory, the eggs are replaced in their natural state under the sand to be returned to the natural rhythms of life and death of hatchlings.
“This maintains the natural process and, most importantly, contributes to nutrient cycling within the coastal ecosystem,” Brzoza said. “Remaining materials from sea turtle nests supply a host of nutrients to the beach, which can be taken up by dune vegetation and various wildlife.”
Healthy vegetation can help stabilize dune systems, which in turn helps maintain healthy, natural beaches that sea turtles rely on for nesting habitat. Stabilized dunes also help bolster shorelines against the effects of storms and erosion, offering a line of defense for inland ecosystems and developed areas.
“That cycle is really important," Brzoza said. "We want to do our best to conserve these species and protect habitats by and through maintaining the integrity of some of these natural processes.”
Hurricane Ian a non-issue
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's final sea turtle nesting numbers are not published yet, but several months ago the agency said nearly all species of sea turtles have increased nesting numbers around the state.
That was despite Hurricane Ian’s winds of 150 mph and a storm surge 15 feet high over the barrier islands.
The record number of loggerhead nests on Sanibel and Captiva islands is even more impressive since it happened on beaches that are, in part, still unrecognizable compared to the pre-Hurricane Ian coastline.
It is clear that at some point during the last 110 million years of co-existence hurricanes and sea turtles have come to an understanding.
Environmental reporting for WGCU is funded in part by VoLo Foundation, a non-profit with a mission to accelerate change and global impact by supporting science-based climate solutions, enhancing education, and improving health.
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