DELAYED REPORT ON TURTLE NESTING AND HATCHINGS

Lots has happened in the last few weeks during my absence from the area for a family reunion up north.  Many more nests appear to have been laid and several have hatched.  The video within this blog entry shows one guy/gal that got a slow start and was out in the sun early in the morning.  As you can see by the video, he made it safely to the ocean.  That's the type of ending that we like to see in our movies!

ONLY FIREWORKS POPPED ON THE BEACH THIS 4TH OF JULY

We had a few more "crawls" this past week, but no nests that hatched - at least as far as this observer could tell.  The attached "turtle nest map" of our section of the beach shows that, by my count, we have 3 hatched nests, 36 possible remaining nests (only "crawls" were noted, no stakes and surrounding ribbon was used by EAI to identify them as "official" nests), and 3 documented nests remaining, for a total of, possibly, 42 nests along our stretch of beach.  Since EAI only stakes out 1 out of every 24 nests along our section of beach, the numbers are just a "guesstimate" at this time in the season.

While the "News Tribune" recently quoted the EAI scientists as indicating that the "sea turtle nesting numbers" were "starting to heat up", our section of the beach is still encountering some problems because of the severe escarpments just south of the jetty and generally poor beach conditions south on the beach for a least 3/4 of a mile.  But, the beach is smoothing out along the southern portion of our section of beach, so we will look forward to seeing increasing numbers of nests being laid in the months to come.

The EAI records show that our extended area of beaches in the southern half of Hutchinson Island in St. Lucie and Martin counties (including Jupiter Island) now has 3,192 Loggerhead nests, compared to 5,616 in all of 2010; 185 Green Sea Turtles so far this year, compared to 840 all last year; and 478 Leatherbacks in comparison to a 2010 total of 414. Looks like we may very well surpass the totals for last year - at least in those areas, and maybe even in this stretch of beach.  Last year, as of October 1, 2010, this blogger's records show that we had a total of 40 nests that had been identified.  Of those, 16 hatched; 20 were destroyed by storms and waves, 3 remained as "possible nests" and one had not hatched as of that date.  Maybe we're on track for a relatively good year, but it is hard to tell when EAI doesn't mark each and every nest that is laid on our beaches.  Only the EAI scientists and assistants are allowed to dig into a suspected nest to determine if eggs were actually laid in those nests.  This blogger can only guess, based on the turtle tracks to and from the ocean, and the amount of sand that was disturbed where the suspected nest may be, as to whether there really are eggs in those "nests".  Oh well, that's half of the fun - to see which ones actually hatch and prove - or disprove - our suspicions!