The party's over - at least for now! The beach renourishment project that was underway on our stretch of beach south of the jetty has now been completed. That was quick! However, unlike other years when they have done a "full" beach renourishment that covered approximately one mile south of the jetty (seen in the photo), they only did a few hundred yards south of the jetty this year. That was the most critical area to renourish, however, since the extent of the erosion was almost up to the jetty park boardwalk and had started to destroy the sea grass that was planted and growing near that boardwalk. The renourishment crew did level out the beach for about 1 mile south from the jetty, so it should make it easier for any sea turtles to climb up on the beach now and lay their eggs.

The photos show the area where an attached chart references coordinates that were taken "before" and "after" the current renourishment. It's only a few "degrees" of longitude on the chart, but it makes a world of difference in the real world!

Good news! We discovered that two new nests had been laid in the interim since our last visit to this stretch of beach. Both were Loggerhead nests ("CC"). A highlight of the beachwalk was that we got to meet Nicki (not sure of the spelling), an employee of the EAI group that we had previously indicated was the company that was hired to keep official track of all of the turtle nests on a number of beaches in our county. She came over on her 4-wheel beach vehicle to where we were recording the points of latitude and longitude of one of the new nests and started a conversation with us. I think that she was just making sure that we were not disturbing the nest in any way and wanted to know what we were doing. We explained that we never disturbed the nests, but were just recording the coordinates for our record sheet/chart - as we had done for the last couple of years. We then asked her about the two Leatherback nests that were near our location and appeared to be in danger of being washed away by the waves. Nicki indicated that they normally do not "transplant" the eggs of endangered nests, letting them fend for themselves with the weather. She said that she had already seen several Leatherback nests be washed away further south on the beach (beyond the stretch of beach that we cover). So, it appears that we may see the two nests in question be washed away in the near future if we have any strong storms and waves in the next couple of weeks. When we told her that we were projecting that the nests were due to hatch in the next week (refer to our chart in previous blog entries), she said that the 55 day average that we had from last year's chart would probably not apply to the Leatherback nests, since they may take anywhere up to 70 days to hatch. So much for our "average # of days incubation" from last year - but it does make sense, since the Leatherbacks are a much larger turtle with larger eggs to incubate. Hope that they hurry this year!

A big weekend (5/15 - 5 17) provided 5 new nests - our first four Loggerhead nests and 1 new Leatherback! The chart now contains a total of seven nests - 3 Leatherback and 4 Loggerhead. Also, the chart that you see here today will change again in future views - not only in the quantity of nests that it contains, but in the organization of the list. In the future, the chart will list the nests in order from the southern most point on our stretch of beach to the northern most point (Jetty), to make it easier for us as we re-check the nests on an almost daily basis. This is especially helpful to us once the nests start hatching and all evidence of the nest is removed from the beach. With the nests organized by longitide from south to north, we can then check them in sequence as we travel on the beach from south to north on our daily beach-walks.

The photo shows the type of chart that we are using again this turtle nesting season. It includes the following data: type of sea turtle nest (2nd & 3rd characters in column one), date nest was laid (4th, 5th & 6th characters in column one), latitude, longitude, date hatched or projected date to hatch and the number of days that the eggs incubated. Additionally, there are several "legends" that provide codes for the type of nest identified, and several beach points (latitude and longitude) to identify beach erosion before and after several beach renourishment efforts.

The beach renourishment project has officially begun on our beach (May 7. 2009)! The photos show some of barges and tugs that will be used to complete the process. A large ship (not shown) is used to go out a mile or two from shore to retrieve (suck up) the sand from offshore "sandbars" and store it in the holds of the ship. Then, this mixture of sand and water ("slurry") will be brought back to where the barges are anchored in the jetty and the slurry will be pumped through large 3' diameter pipes from the ship to the shoreline. The slurry can be pumped over a mile down our stretch of south beach.

It will probably be necessary for the EAI employees to now move some of the current nests that are in the way of this project, and watch out for any new nests that may be laid during the project. Currently, there are only the two nests on our stretch of beach (Leatherback nests) that may need to be moved if the renourishment process gets too close to them before they hatch in late May (if our guesstimate is accurate).

Here's a recent photo of the scarp that has been created on our beach (about 3/4 of a mile from the jetty) by northeast winds and waves during the winter. This deep of a scarp will make it difficult for sea turtles to get far enough up on the beach to nest and lay their eggs. Beach renourishment is needed and is on the way!

No new nests to report in our stretch of beach, so I cheated this morning and walked another 150 yards south to see the three nests that were there on the beach. Two of them were labeled as "DC", which indicates that these were Leatherback nests. It appears that they were laid in March (3/15 & 3/19, I believe). However, there was a surprise with the third nest. It is a Loggerhead nest and is the first one that I have seen this year (even though it is "outside" of our official stretch of beach!). It appears to have been laid on May 1, so it should hatch sometime mid-to end of June. It should have a good chance, since it is way up near the sea oats and the dune line, as you can see in the one photo. Also of interest was an article in the local newspaper this morning ("St. Lucie News Tribune", May 5, 2009) with a headline indicating that "sea turtles (are)drowning at (an)alarming rate". The article, written by Carl Safina, reported that many large sea turtles are caught by fishermen's long fishing lines and are drowned before they can be rescued by the commercial fishermen. His suggestion to resolve this problem is to have officials more closely monitor commercial fishermen (and more effectively enforce the laws already existing) so as to reduce the number of sea turtles that are killed this way each year.