Hatchlings emerging with several weeks to go
The 2022 Southwest Florida sea turtle nesting season is off to a strong start as some local beaches are near record nesting numbers and it’s still several weeks before females stop laying eggs.
Turtle nesting season runs May through October. Females mate and emerge from the Gulf of Mexico to build nests during the first half of the season, then the eggs mature and hatchlings usually emerge during the later parts of summer and early fall.
“It is packed,” Eve Haverfield, with Turtle Time Inc., said of Bonita Beach in Bonita Springs. “Our record was in 2019 and we had 237 nests, and this year we’re already at 233. We still have all of July to go. We don’t know how many there will be, but it will certainly surpass 237.”
The most common sea turtles that nest on Southwest Florida beaches are the loggerhead, although greens and even the gigantic leatherback have been known to nest in this region over the past decade.
Females lay four to seven nests per summer season at 11- to 15-day intervals. They don’t lay nests every year, rather every two to three years.
The turtles typically nest at night, slowly emerging from warm Gulf waters, digging a massive hole, laying 100 eggs or more, covering them
“We’re hoping this trend continues. In 2016 we had a good year and it’s kind of going along with that. Hopefully we don’t get a red tide ... And hopefully the weather will stay good and they’ve started to hatch, but it’s a slow process.”
All the nests on Bonita Beach were laid by loggerhead turtles, Haverfield said.
While the area has seen an increasing number of green turtles in recent years, there have been no nests on Bonita Beach so far this year, she said.
“We were really counting on a green coming back to us,” Haverfield said. “And we’ve only had one (loggerhead) hatch (so far) on Bonita Beach and it did very well. Bonita Beach is really healthy as far as sea turtle nesting habitat goes.”
According to the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, 20 turtle nests have already hatched on the islands and about 1,853 hatchlings have begun their trek to the water and eventually into the Florida Loop Current.
“Our nest counts remain close to those in 2021, with 479 and 174 nests laid to date on Sanibel and Captiva, respectively,” according to a foundation press release. And green sea turtle nests are on track with last year.
Farther south in Collier County, female sea turtles have been active as well.
Maura Kraus, with Collier County’s sea turtle protection program, said the Naples area has been given a special turtle treat this year: a leatherback nest.
“We have one leatherback on one of the mainland beaches,” Kraus said. “We know that they’ve been here.”
Kraus said the offshore structure of the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico makes it difficult for leatherbacks to make it all the way to the beach.
“The continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico in this area is really far out,” Kraus said. “And the leatherbacks eat jellyfish and move up and and down with the water column to get their food and with our (part of the) continental shelf being so shallow, it’s rare that we have them here.”
The leatherback is the largest of the sea turtles; it can reach 1,500 pounds and measure 6 feet in length, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Collier isn’t included as leatherback habitat on a map that idenitifies beaches where they are known to nest. They typically nest along Florida’s east coast, in the Panhandle and sometimes in Lee County, according to FWC records.
Leatherbacks are true seafarers, diving several thousand feet deep and swimming 3,000 miles from their nesting site.
Kraus said there are about 300 more nests on the beaches her team monitors than there were this time last year.
“I’ve never had so many nests in the city of Naples,” she said. “Vanderbilt is way up and Delnor-Wiggins is up, Marco is about the same and Ten Thousand Islands is doing very well.”
Research shows average sea turtle nesting numbers have been going up in the past few decades.
“We’re hoping this trend continues,” Kraus said. “In 2016 we had a good year and it’s kind of going along with that. Hopefully we don’t get a red tide because we’d be screwed. And hopefully the weather will stay good and they’ve started to hatch but it’s a slow process.”
Simona Ceriani, with FWC’s sea turtle monitoring program, said it’s too early to tell exactly how the season will pan out statewide, but she stressed how important the state’s loggerhead population is to the species.
“Florida accounts for 90% of all loggerheads in the northwest Atlantic Ocean, and that’s the largest aggregation in the world,” she said.
Ceriani said so many nests may make it seem as though these animals are quite common. They’re actually pretty rare.
“They’re not common in other places of the world, so we’re kind of spoiled,” Ceriani said. “It’s important to keep in mind that our loggerheads are very important to the population worldwide.”
Connect with this reporter: @ChadEugene on Twitter.