Local Leatherback Nest a Success
-by Jeremy Morrison
Since May, sea turtles have been nesting on beaches throughout Florida, burying their eggs in the sand and hoping the hatchlings find their way into the surf. Nesting season runs through October, but Escambia County has provided Inweekly with some mid-season counts for local beaches.
According to Samantha Bolduc, community outreach specialist for Escambia County Natural Resources Management, as of Aug. 29 approximately 826 regional hatchlings had entered the Gulf of Mexico. While 585 sea turtles hatched on Pensacola Beach, a reported 241 hatched on Perdido Key.
A couple of days later, the last day of August, Mark Nicholas, Escambia’s marine environmental program manager in its Marine Resource Division, upped that count 877 hatchlings thus far. On Pensacola Beach, he relayed, there have been a total of 33 nests laid, with 12 having hatched so far; unfortunately, two of the nests on the beach failed due to flooding and there have also been some disorientation issues with some of the hatchlings. Perdido Key, meanwhile, has just seven nests this season, with three having already hatched, one having failed, and two more experiencing disorientation issues.
“Unfortunately one hatched during the rain events of last week and we have no idea where they went,” Nicholas reported, adding that volunteers on the Key have helped ensure that most of the hatchlings make it into the water and don’t get turned around and head inland.
One sea turtle nest can be a source of many hatchlings. For instance, Nicholas reported that a loggerhead sea turtle nest he responded to the night of Aug. 26 produced 67 sea turtles headed toward the gulf.
Most of the sea turtle nests on local beaches belong to loggerheads. One nest on Pensacola Beach this season, however, was that of a leatherback sea turtle. The leatherback, listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, is the largest of all turtles, and the heaviest non-crocodilian reptile; leatherbacks can weigh up to 1,500 pounds and can grow to a length of seven feet.
This single leatherback nest on Pensacola Beach — an extreme rarity for the area — has already hatched.
“The leatherback nest successfully hatched and somewhere on the order of 70-80 hatchling entered the Gulf,” relayed Tim Day, deputy director of Escambia’s Natural Resources Management Department.
A graph provided by Nicholas illustrated the local region’s tack record with sea turtle nests. With three months left in nesting season, the count is already outpacing the totals from the past four years, most of which fell far below 500 hatchling. In fact, this year’s numbers are already higher than most of the tallies going back to 1996. Only a few years tracked on the graph saw greater than a thousand hatchlings in a single season. Exceptional spikes in the count occurred in 2013, when more than 1,500 hatchlings entered the gulf and 2016, which more than 2,500 successfully hatched and made it into the water.
