START LOOKING!

It's time to start looking - for sea turtle nests along our coast. I haven't found any in our section of the beach, yet, but I noticed that we had recorded one as early as March 28 last year, so.... it's time to start our walks along the beach and take our GPS with us to record the locations. We will follow much the same procedure as last year, and only record in our log those nests officially located and "staked-off" by the employees of the EAI (Environmental Associates, Inc.). EAI contracted with the county last year to "monitor turtle nests on Hutchinson Island from Normandy Beach in St. Lucie County south to the St. Lucie Inlet and from the Fort Pierce Inlet south to the Ocean Village condominiums in the South Beach area of Fort Pierce", according to a June 21, 2009 article in the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. I'm guessing (and hoping) that they will be hired again this year, since they did a great job last year. According to their stats as of June 21, 2009, our sections of the beach (noted above) counted 739 Loggerhead nests, 304 Leatherback nests, and only 2 Green sea turtle nests. As of September 25, 2009 our stats for a smaller stretch of beach showed that 38 Loggerhead nests had hatched, and 3 Leatherback nests had survived to hatch (see photos from last year's blog entries). While we had recorded that 51 nests had been laid, only 41 survived wave and/or storm damages to complete their cycle and hatch.

Check in with this blog as the spring and summer progresses and new sea turtle nests are laid. We'll try to keep you posted with new photos, videos and naratives of the nesting season, just as we did last year on this site.