RECALCULATING! It's time to revise the game plan this year, since we have just discovered that EAI, Inc. is only marking 1 out of 24 sea turtle nests that they find on our stretch of beach this season! What? Yes - a reliable source has indicated to us that EAI is apparently doing their own research relative to sea turtle nesting on "native sands" vs. "replenished sands" on several beaches. Since the beach area that we "patrol" has had several "sand replenishments" over the last 10 years, we are apparently part of the project. I'm still not sure of their research methodology", but I plan to give EAI a call, sometime in the near future, to help clarify what is happening relative to their research.

In the meantime, it's back to square one for us, since we will need to attempt to find all of the "nesting tracks" that have occurred on our stretch of beach over the past several months. Unfortunately, it is almost an impossible task, since many of the tracks and possible nests have been obscured by weather, EAI's own buggy tracks where they attempt to cover up the sea turtle tracks, and the factor of time that has lapsed since the tracks and nests were made. It is discouraging to find out about their "research plan" at this late date, but we have nobody to blame but ourselves, since we had serious concerns about why we were not finding more EAI-marked nests way back in April. We'll just have to do our best on our own to make up for lost time! Our apologies to our "many" blog followers. We'll try to make it up to the three of you - as soon as possible!

A TURTLE PUZZLE

Something's wrong! We have only found 4 nests total - one Leatherback and three Loggerhead turtle nests on our stretch of beach as of the end of June this year in comparison to about 36 nests that were located and staked out by EAI by this time last year! Don't know what the explanation is. It appears that EAI is still marking all of the nests that they find, but we will need to check on that assumption.

WHAT'S THE STORY?

It's the middle of May already and we only have one Loggerhead Sea Turtle nest to show for it - at least on the stretch of beach that we frequently walk in the morning. The photo shows one from a past year. The small number this year is becoming a concern, since we may have only one Leatherback Turtle nest to date, as well, on that same stretch (possibly laid back on April 9). While this may not be a representative sample of all of the Hutchinson Island beaches covered by the Environmental Associates, Inc. biologists, it is several fewer nests to date than the number we had by this time last year. By May 17, 2009, we had recorded three Leatherback nests and 3 Loggerhead nests on this section of beach. We may not yet have enough to see a "pattern" for the year, but with the steep beach "escarpments" caused by February and March waves, and the large oil spills in the Gulf possibly reaching our eastern Florida coast in the near future, sea turtles may be in for a difficult egg-nesting season. We were fortunate to flag down an EAI employee this morning to ask her our question of whether this was typical of the rest of the beaches that they patrolled. She indicated that there were a number of nests south of where we walk the beach, but another comment that caught our attention was that she indicated that they may not officially mark all of the Leatherback nests because those turtles lay their eggs in nests dug very deep in the sand. You may remember that I was only able to find one stake designating a Leatherback nest - not the typical triangular 3 posts with yellow tape wrapped between those stakes. We won't jump to any conclusions - yet, but will hope that the sea turtle-nesting activity increases significantly in the months to come.

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.

MAP FINALE

It's a wrap! Yes, as far as our stretch of beach is concerned, the 2009 sea turtle nesting season is over. Final results (see map) show that we ended up with a total of 51 nests for the season - 48 Loggerhead nests and 3 Leatherback nests. Of those 51 nests, 41 hatched (green tags) and 10 were destroyed by wave or storm action (blue tags). The last one to hatch, by or records, was TC731 - a Loggerhead nest laid on July 31, 2009. It started to "hatch" on September 21. For comparison, we had 83 nests total during the 2008 nesting season, with 23 destroyed by storms and only 50 hatching. As a result, even though we started out the season with 32 fewer nests (51 vs. 83), only 9 fewer nests (41) actually survived to hatch this year than was the number that hatched last year (50).

It was a very interesting season and we'll hope that a high percentage of those hatchlings actually survive to adulthood and come back to visit our beaches in 20-30 years to lay new nests. Here's to the survival of our wonderful sea-faring friends!

GRAND TOTAL

This week's totals for sea turtle nests on our section of beach totals 38 hatched, 10 wave/storm destroyed, and 3 still unhatched nests. Two of those unhatched nests are due to hatch next week, while the last one should hatch in early October - based on our average of 55 days of incubation that was determined with last year's 83 nests.

Today, I found one nest (TCC729) that had several hatchling trails that were visible in the morning when I walked the beach. I made a special attempt to track the trails of those hatchlings who went in directions away from the ocean during their night travels. Several had traveled many yards parallel to the ocean shore, eventually either ending up in the sea oats and grasses on the dune line, or eventually finding their way back to the ocean. One trail of special interest had traveled 280 yards parallel to the ocean before ending up in the ocean! My guesstimate of yards was based on my beach stride on the beach which I calculate to be about 1 yard per stride. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate some of the hatchlings whose tracks ended up in the dune grasses. One track even followed one of the pedestrian trails leading from the road to the beach - another 100 yards, or so, journey. Hopefully, someone found him/her early in the morning and assisted him/her in returning to the ocean. And so it goes as we come to the end of this sea turtle nesting season!

ANOTHER INTERESTING WEBSITE

I came across a website that had some interesting photos and videos of a Loggerhead nest hatching at night. The site is at www.fla-keys.com/turtlecam . It's better footage than my cell phone video of the Leatherback nest hatching with the 64 hatchlings, but they are equally interesting. Several nests hatched along our stretch of beach in the past couple of weeks, but several were also destroyed by wave action and high tides. Our tally to date is 35 hatched, 8 wave/storm destroyed, and 8 remaining. The most recent nest hatched yesterday (9/4/09) and had been projected to hatch on 9/11/09, using last year's average of 55 days for all 83 nests (Loggerhead and Leatherback) documented last year. All remaining nests are identified as Loggerhead nests.