October 27, 2009

Each summer, sea turtles will slowly start to lay nests starting in May and will continue through mid September.  Approximately 48-60 days after the first nest is laid, usually in late July, the first nests will begin to hatch and the hatching continues into October.         Things are going as quickly as they came.  As we are nearing the end of nesting season, there have been 338 nests laid on county beaches.  6 of them are Leatherback nests, 8 more are from Green sea turtles and the remaining are Loggerhead nests.   They are scattered throughout the county from New Smyrna Beach to Ormond by the Sea, with an almost equal number of nests either side of Ponce Inlet.  We have also received over 300 reports of false crawls (a non nesting emergence) to date.  We are well below recent year counts of nesting numbers for this time in the season.  The last nest was laid on 9/10/09.  It is unlikely any more will be laid this season.   We will continue to see nests hatch through October.  Of the total 338 nests, 331 have been evaluated and only 7 remain incubating in the sand.  Below is a summary of data on the reproductive success of our hatched nests.   Live Dead Pip Live Pip Dead UnhatchWhole UnhatchBroken Unhatched Hatched 571 582 99 607 4361 1334 5615   26213 Of the 331 nests which have been evaluated, 21 egg clutches could not be located, 26 nests were depredated or scavenged by raccoons and 3 nests washed out so success could not be determined.  Rut removal crews are finished.  These crews work by smoothing out vehicle ruts in front of nests due to hatch in the driving areas.  They smooth the sand out so that baby hatchlings don’t get trapped in deep pits which make them subject to predation and well as makes them expend important energy reserves.  Since there are no nests remaining in any public driving areas, the crews are done for this season. 7 nests are still to hatch so keeping lighting in compliance with the Volusia County Sea Turtle Lighting ordinance is still important.  Artificial lights can deter nesting females and can have an even greater negative impact when they attract hatchling turtles to areas other than the ocean.  Each year, many end up being attracted onto parking lots and upland property away from the ocean because they are heading to the brightest horizon following their instincts.  In nature, the brightest horizon would be the ocean. In our world, lights are confusing and can lead to their demise.  For beachfront residents and visitors, this can be accomplished by drawing your curtains at night, not using unnecessary lights and ensure that those in use are shielded and don’t illuminate the beach and that the light source is not visible from any part of the beach. There are lots of great wildlife friendly lights on the market and by upgrading to some of these types of fixtures, many people are pleasantly pleased to find out that they can have functional, fun, wildlife friendly lights while living on or near the beach. There have been 10 disorientation events this year.  We are ecstatic that none have been in the north county area where new 3-sided shields have been installed on approximately 60 FPL leased streetlights!  This is a densely populated nesting area very close to Oceanshore Blvd..  The number of total disorientations is also much lower than recent years.  There has been a combined total of 124 sea turtles involved in the events.  Of those, 8 were found dead and 4 were alive.  The remaining 112 presumably made it to the water.  To date in 2009, we have received reports of 60 stranded sea turtles. All the turtles that stranded alive are taken to the rehabilitation facility at the Marine Science Center while they receive treatment from the staff there. If they are successfully brought back to health, they are released back into the wild as soon as possible. Unfortunately, stranded turtles are always either weak, sick, injured, or dead sea turtles that get washed onto shore. We wrapped up the 2008 nesting season with a record high final nest count of 649 nests. Of those we had 617 Loggerhead nests, and 32 Green sea turtles nests. It was our 2nd highest nest count of Loggerhead nests in 19 years! (in 1999 we counted 626 Loggerhead nests) Also, Recently, Volusia County nesting data was reevaluated for nesting trends by different species in Volusia County. Interestingly enough, the Loggerhead sea turtle which 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 not showing a great upward or downward trend. Despite Volusia County counts, Loggerhead nesting is showing a dramatic decline throughout Florida. 2007 was the lowest nesting year on record with only 45,072 nests laid in the state. 2008 was a little higher with 59,696 nests recorded 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. 2008 was also a good year with 9,312 nests counted. Leatherbacks are also showing upward signs in nesting numbers and the state had a total of 1,442 nests counted in 2007 and 837 in 2008. So far in 2009, Leatherback numbers in other parts of Florida are already much higher than average. This correlates with their past trend record of having higher nest numbers every other year. We are expecting 2009 to be a high year for both species, although we won't know until the counts are in! Both Green sea turtles and Leatherbacks are continuing to show a slightly upward nesting trend on Volusia Beaches as well. In general, nesting numbers in Volusia County are around a 450 total average with our highest count for Loggerheads nesting in one season at 626 (1999), Greens follow with a high of 54 in one season (2007) and the most active Leatherback year resulted in 9 (2001) 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 OTHER NEWS: Washback sea turtles are washing in with fresh seaweed!  Some washback sea turtles have been recovered from our beaches in recent weeks!  If you happen to find one, DO NOT PUT IT BACK IN THE WATER and notify Beach Safety ASAP!!  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. In the ocean it is this algae and barnacles that keep them camouflaged from predators while they live in seaweed beds for 5 to 10 years. Outside of sea turtle nesting season, the beach is opened to public driving from sunrise to sunset.  However from May 1 –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.   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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