Sea turtles lay a lot of eggs — as many as 100 at a time, and they can lay eggs as many as seven times during the roughly six-month nesting season which runs from May to October here in Southwest Florida.
Sea turtles lay many eggs because only about 1 in 1000 hatchlings will make it into the ocean and grow to reach sexual maturity, which takes about 30 years.
The 2024 nesting season is being described as "steady" even though several storms disrupted hatching success. Southwest Florida’s beaches faced multiple wash-over events, including Tropical Storms Debbie & Francine, and Hurricanes Helene & Milton.
On Keewaydin Island in Collier County approximately 43% of nests were lost to impacts from these storms. Overall, there were 425 nests on the island (almost all loggerhead turtles) and about 242 of them were successful. Monitors from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida estimate that 14,975 hatchlings made it to the Gulf from nests just on Keewaydin Island.
The Conservancy has been monitoring and protecting nests on the island since 1983. It’s one of the longest continuously running sea turtle monitoring programs in the U.S.
To get a sense of how that program works, and how the 2024 season turned out, we talk with someone who has been keeping tabs on sea turtles in southwest Florida for decades.
Guest:
Kathy Worley, Director of Environmental Science at Conservancy of Southwest Florida
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