Turtle nests reach record
Monday, August 11th, 2008
Reprinted by The Brunswick News Mon, Aug 11, 2008
By ANNA FERGUSON
With a few weeks left in the season, employees at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island are crossing their fingers in hopes of having a record year for loggerhead sea turtle nesting.
As of Friday, 165 loggerhead nests had been spotted along the Jekyll coastline. The record high for nests counted on the beach of the state park is 204, established in 2003.
“Things are going good,” said Stefanie Ouellette, education coordinator for the center.
Across the state, turtle counts have been equally positive. Turtle nests have reached a record high, with an estimated 1,544 nests on Georgia’s coastline.
Florida, too, has good news to report on the turtle front, noting a record high in nests counts since 2003, Ouellette said.
Loggerheads, an endangered species, typically have a nesting season that runs from June through August, with hatching season ending in October. Nesting counts had held steady in high numbers throughout the summer but began to slow toward the start of August, making this week’s count a welcome change, Ouellette said.
A number of explanations have been tossed about to account for the high number of nests, though no one reason can be pinned down, Ouellette said.
Last year’s nesting season was a record low for Jekyll, leading researchers to believe that this year’s high is part of the reptiles natural seasonal variations. The flux in counts could also be paying off from the ongoing efforts from the scientific community to increase awareness about nest protection and turtle preservation, Ouellette said.
“There is no one particular reason,” she said. “It could be any number of things.”
Whatever the reason, the 2008 nesting season is proving to be a great year, she said.
The turtle center is now switching its public awareness efforts from nests to hatchlings.
Turtle hatching season goes through the fall and is a season that is even more sensitive for turtles than nesting. Each nests holds an average of 100 to 120 eggs, with hatch rates posed between 80 and 100 percent for unmoved nests.
The baby turtles must make it from their nests to the ocean to survive, a move that is made doubly hard by harsh human lights.
“Now is the time to be even more careful about lights and keeping lights away from the beach,” Ouellette said.
To help ensure a safe route from the sand to the water for newly hatched turtles, Ouellete reminds beachgoers to point headlights away from dunes and to take precautions with flashlights by avoiding light use near the beach and adjacent sidewalks.
