They're coming: a mass of female sea turtles aiming to lay eggs on Southwest Florida beaches this summer.
Turtles nest on local beaches here every year, just as they have since this part of the state emerged from the ocean thousands of years ago.
Sea turtle nesting season runs from May 1 through Oct. 31, and hundreds of females will lumber onto local beaches, dig giant holes and deposit thousands of eggs into the sandy shoreline along the Gulf of Mexico.
Compared to their land cousins, sea turtles are enormous, some (like the leatherback) reaching the size of a small car.
In the early morning, just as the sun rises, a delicate rumble beneath the sand begins to stir, and small dark heads breach the surface and peak out from underground. Then, an eruption occurs as tiny hatchling sea turtles all emerge together, racing toward the light reflected off the ocean. They are lucky this time, avoiding natural predators or human disturbance, and they taste the saltwater for the first time and begin frantically swimming off into the deep blue.
This miracle has finally started on Southwest Florida beaches this summer. About 60 days ago, the first sea turtle nests were laid on our coastlines, and it is now time for the little babies to hatch and make their way to the ocean. Having worked with nesting and hatchling sea turtles for a few years now, this is my favorite time of the season. This is also the time that I get the most questions about ways to help the baby sea turtles, so I thought I would share one of my biggest tips.
I cannot emphasize this enough: the best way to help hatchlings is to leave them alone! Trust me, I know how tempting it can be to “help” the baby turtles by picking them up and taking them to the water. However, many scientists agree with the hypothesis that this initial crawl to the ocean is critical in the development of the sea turtles.
A female sea turtle returns to the same beach (within about 30 miles) of where she hatched out as a baby, a phenomenon termed natal homing. Scientists believe in that first race to the ocean, they are imprinting on that beach, most likely the Earth’s magnetic field, so that about 25 years later at maturity they can find the beach again.
Scientists also believe the crawl is like a warmup for the frenzied swim that they make once they reach the water, helping to stretch their flippers and let them prepare for swimming. Then, they will be prepared to swim like crazy out to the waters where they will spend their early years, usually the Sargasso Sea in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
So, if humans are picking up the hatchlings on this important crawl, it can disorient them and make them slightly weaker for their initial journey in the ocean. If you find hatchlings that are in trouble from predators like birds, you can still help them from a distance by hanging out nearby to scare the birds away. However, be sure to not block the path to the ocean, and again, keep your hands to yourself.