December 1, 2009

The 2009 nesting season ended with a lower than average number of nests but the year didn’t lack anything in the way of excitement.  As always, there was a lot to keep us busy.  Besides normal nest monitoring tasks, we also made huge efforts at educating the public about the sea turtle lighting ordinance, conducted countless inspections, had a pair of nesting Black Skimmers, multiple Wilson’s Plover nests, a sea turtle which went missing and many changes and improvements to the operation of the program, not to mention a new mother in the office!  The season wrapped up with a final count of 338 total nests.  We had 8 Green turtle nests, 6 Leatherback nests and 324 Loggerhead nests.  All nests have been evaluated, the final results are below.  Live Dead Pip Live Pip Dead UnhatchWhole UnhatchBroken Unhatched Hatched 583 584 100 612 4476 1607 6083   27209 Of the 338 nests which were evaluated, 21 egg clutches could not be located, 32 nests were depredated or scavenged by raccoons and only 3 nests washed out so success could not be determined.  Ongoing lighting education efforts will continue this off season.  Lighting inspector, Allison Fulton, is available to assist you with lighting questions, making suggestions for improvements and providing a professional opinion on your remodel project.  Please contact Allison at 238-4773 or afulton@co.volusia.fl.us .  A Lighting Extravaganza is also scheduled for March 18th at Daytona State College.  This will be open to the public.  Details will be posted closer to the event but it will include lighting displays and presentations. 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 65 stranded sea turtles. Unfortunately, stranded turtles are always either weak, sick, injured, or dead sea turtles that get washed onto shore. 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. OTHER NEWS:  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.   If you ever happen to find one, DO NOT PUT IT BACK IN THE WATER and notify Beach Safety ASAP!!  Washback Watchers are dedicated and permitted volunteers that are trained to search the beach for these washback turtles from August to November annually. In 2009, over 218 individual surveys have been conducted to search for turtles and luckily only 1 washback was found!! The Adopt A Beach volunteers have been busy keeping their adopted mile of beach clean in 2009!  As of the end of November there were 44 individual clean-ups conducted with 252 volunteers. Over 237 hours, these volunteers clean-up over 900 pounds of trash off the beach! Trash can be debilitating or fatal for wildlife so these efforts are really important for the health of the beach! We are also working on compiling information for our annual report and other catch up and side projects such as shorebird monitoring, resetting the conservation zone in areas where there is sand accretion and plants emerging east of the poles, monitoring construction projects and planning ahead for 2010! 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 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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