January 16, 2013
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| Baby rescued from a nest |
From May through October, Florida beaches are home to sea
turtle nests. Females come ashore during the night and lay about 100 rubbery
eggs the size of ping-pong balls. They haul themselves up on the beach, dig a
hole about 18 inches deep, lay their eggs and then cover them up. In about
three hours they are heading back to the water. I love walking on the beach in
the morning and looking for fresh turtle tracks coming from the water and then
going back out again.
Here on the gulf coast the most common sea turtle is
the Loggerhead. We have a very active ‘turtle patrol’ group that stakes the
nests so they aren’t disturbed. In about 60 days the hatchlings make their way
to the water at night and swim out to the seagrass beds where they live for
several years. These little babes weigh less than an ounce and are only two
inches long. Their sex is determined during incubation by the nest temperature:
boys like it cool and girls like it hot.
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| Digging up the nest |
A few days after they leave, the patrol digs up the
nest and counts the eggshells. Bob and I attended an excavation this summer and
were delighted to find that about ten little turtles were stuck in the nest.
This gave us a rare chance to see them! They were all released a few hours later
under the cover of darkness.
This past summer there were 370 nests on Anna Maria
Island alone. From those nests, approximately 23,178 little hatchlings headed
into the gulf. Scientists estimate that only 1 in 1,000-10,000 hatchlings live
to adulthood so it’s a pretty tough life. Adult turtles can grow over 3 feet
long and weigh 200–300 pounds. Sea turtles live their entire lives in the ocean
and only the females come ashore to nest.
All sea turtles are endangered but I’m thrilled to
see that so many are nesting in my own backyard. Perhaps next year I can join
the turtle patrol. Wouldn’t that be fun?
