An article in today's "St. Lucie News Tribune" (11/9/11) had the headline "Nesting turtles ride out waves, having a "fairly good year'". That's totally "bogus" relative to our stretch of beach and the number of nests that were able to hatch on our beaches! However, if you take the headline literally - it could be interpreted to mean that the sea turtles rode out the waves and stayed off of our beaches - because they couldn't get in to our beach to lay their nests because of the high escarpments blocking their access to the beach - and had a "fairly good year" because many of them probably ended up laying their nests on beaches much further to our south, where the nests were able to fully incubate and successfully hatch so that the hatchlings were able to reach the ocean. Not so up here near the Jetty! Check out the old photo that I took back in August and compare it with the recent photos in the newspaper. All photos vividly show how bad the beach erosion was all along our part of the coast - so severe that I would estimate that no sea turtle nests survived after early September. By August 16, using my calculations and observations, only 16 out of 73 of the sea turtle nests had hatched. By that time, as well, most of the remaining nests had been washed away or severely flooded out to the point that I called it the end of the season back at the end of August for all of our sea turtle nesting here on our mile or so of beach just south of the Jetty. When I got back in early October from a one month's vacation in September, I walked the beach several times and never saw any signs of nests, hatchlings or even exposed nests and eggs. Obviously, the newspaper article was discussing the nests to the extreme south in St. Lucie County and the northern reaches of Martin County and did not depict the very disastrous results on our part of the Atlantic beaches. I was glad to read, from their data and the "experts" that they contacted for the article, that the sea turtle nesting season was a "fairly good year", but that is definitely not the "whole story". The Army Corps of Engineers had better live up to their promises (and funding) and completely renourish this beach by next season or there will not even be a dune line for the sea turtles to nest in next year! Keep your fingers crossed for light winds and seas from a southeasterly direction during the winter, or we all may be seeking other "nesting sites" during the winter!
This is probably this writer's last blog on this site until, and if, the next sea turtle nesting season takes place on our shores. Best wishes to all of this blog's readers until we meet again!
