April, 2008

Sea turtle nesting season officially opens May 1 and runs through Oct. 31!   Sea turtles will slowly start to lay nests starting in May and will continue through mid August.  Approximately 48-60 days after the first nest is laid, usually in late June or July, the first nests will begin to hatch and the hatching continues into October.  The last nests are actually laid in either late August and occasionally we’ll get one in Sept.  We wrapped up the 2007 nesting season with a final nest count of 562 nests.  Of those we had 3 species types. 502 were Loggerhead nests, 54 were from Green Sea turtles and 4 were from Leatherbacks.   It was our 3rd highest nest count in 19 years! Volusia County beaches are looking great!  Most areas have gained in elevation and width which is most suitable for sea turtle nests to incubate successfully.  Sea turtles' eggs are air-permeable and they will not survive if inundated in water for extended periods of time.  Often times when nests are laid too close to the area of high tides or near water runoff locations, the eggs are relocated to an area that is higher and dryer.  The dry beach habitat is critical to the survivorship of all species of nesting sea turtles that come here.  During some of the nesting season in 2008, a beach re-nourishment project is taking place between Sapphire Neighborhood Park and 21st St. in New Smyrna Beach .  A Florida Inland Navigational District (FIND) and Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) maintenance dredge project is pumping sand from the Intracoastal water way (ICW) onto the beach.  The contractor for this job has been very conscientious of the sea turtle nesting season and is working to keep communication lines open with county staff and the sea turtle monitoring groups.  Go to http://www.volusia.org/beach/closures.htm for more information about this project. Outside of sea turtle nesting season, the beach is opened to public driving from sunrise to sunset.  However from May1 –Oct. 31- the beach opening and closing times are from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.  This allows time for sea turtle monitoring crews to clearly mark all the nests and perform tasks before the beach is open to driving for the public.   As usual, the numbers of stranded turtles has started to rise as it always does this time of year, presumably due to increased numbers of turtles in the area.  Unfortunately, strandings are always either weak, sick, injured, or dead sea turtles that get washed onto shore.   To date in 2008, we have received reports of 24 stranded sea turtles.  All the turtles that stranded alive can be seen in the rehabilitation facility at the Marine Science Center while they receive treatment from the staff there.     In 2007 we also had a very unusually high amount of washback sea turtles recovered from our beaches.  Washbacks are young post hatchling sea turtles which have hatched from nests, swum to the gulf stream and live in floating sea weed wrack lines.  When there are strong on shore winds between August and Nov., they are sometimes pushed onto the beach along with the seaweed.  They are about the size of the palm of your hand and have hair algae or barnacles growing on them making it obvious that they have been in the ocean for some time.  We recovered over 4,000 of them in 2007 during strong onshore winds in Sept and October.  See our photo album for pictures.  All of the washbacks were transported to the Marine Science Center in Ponce Inlet where they were evaluated and eventually released back into the wild.  Please visit www.marinesciencecenter.com for more information about the science center.  Recently, our nesting data was reevaluated for nesting trends by different species in Volusia County .   Interestingly enough, the Loggerhead sea turtle who is the most popular species of sea turtle to nest on Florida beaches, shows a static trend in Volusia County .  Over the entire course of time that we have collected data here, the overall trend is now showing no great upward or downward trend.  Both Green sea turtles and Leatherbacks are continuing to show a slightly upward nesting trend on Volusia Beaches.  Throughout the state of Florida however, Loggerhead nesting is showing a dramatic decline.  2007 was the lowest nesting year on record with only 45,072 nests laid in the state.  According to FWC marine biologists, since 1998 there has been a 40% decline in all populations of the Loggerhead sea turtles nesting in Florida .  Ironically, Green sea turtle nests are on the rise statewide and 2007 was the highest nest count ever with  12,752 nests counted.  Leatherbacks are also showing upward signs in nesting numbers and the state had a total of 1,442 nests counted in 2007.  In general, nesting numbers in Volusia County are around a 400 total average with our highest count for Loggerheads nesting in one season at 626, Greens follow with a high of 54 in one season (2007) and the most active Leatherback year resulted in 9 nests deposited on county beaches.  This ratio gives a better perspective of the amount of activity recorded on our beaches.  Greens and Leatherbacks have larger nesting colonies in other parts of the world but Florida is a very important nesting area for Loggerheads, second only to an island off of Europe .  To learn more about sea turtles and the groups that survey Volusia County beaches for them you can now visit their websites, *South of the Inlet: Volusia Sea Turtle Society  http://www.vstsinc.org/ http://www.ecological-associates.com *North of the Inlet: Volusia Turtle Patrol  http://turtlepatrol.com Please remember and be understanding that vehicular access to the beach may be delayed or prohibited when environmental conditions such as high tides warrant.   Also remember that driving and parking are never allowed within the Conservation Zone.  The beach will reopen to driving as soon as conditions permit. Please check back to this site regularly, as we will have updates to the nesting season and data posted as numbers change.  We will let you know how many nests have been laid, their success and failure stories and any other pertinent and exciting information about the program we can think of!   Hope to see you at the beach!

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