A volunteer monitor from Sea Turtle Adventures checks a nest on the beach in Ocean Ridge on Aug. 13. The nonprofit found 75 green turtle nests this year in Gulf Stream, Briny Breezes and part of Ocean Ridge. Mary Kate Leming/The Coastal Star
By Larry Keller
Looking for a trend in this year’s South County sea turtle nesting? There isn’t one. The ancient critters were as capricious as a tropical storm when it came to what beaches they chose for laying eggs.
“It’s a little bit of a mixed bag this year,” said Joanne Ryan, who holds the permit to tabulate sea turtle nests in Highland Beach.
Nesting season runs from March 1 to Oct. 31, although a few turtles may lay eggs before and after those dates. Females lumber ashore after dark, dig nests and deposit 100 or so eggs each. Ideally, after a couple of months, hatchlings will emerge en masse like a tiny armored battalion charging undaunted into the sea.
Although there were no disruptions from major storms or beach renourishment projects this year, the number of green sea turtle nests decreased. The numbers are unlikely to change much, if at all, this late in the season.
There were 190 nests spotted by the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center team that surveys nests on 5 miles of Boca Raton shoreline, said David Anderson, sea turtle conservation coordinator.
In 2019, however, a record-high 393 green turtle nests were counted on Boca Raton beaches — more than double this year’s total. That’s an apt year for comparison, since greens normally nest in much greater numbers in odd-numbered years.
“We were thinking we might get 300” this year, Anderson said.
Like Boca Raton, Delray Beach had an all-time high in green sea turtle nests in 2019, with 52.
This year: only 28, said Joe Scarola, senior scientist at Ecological Associates Inc., which monitors 3 miles of shoreline there. Delray Beach’s nesting data goes back to 1984.
Despite the declines, one year does not make a trend with a species that lives and nests for decades, Anderson and Scarola said.
“It’s nothing to be concerned about,” Anderson said.
“I don’t see anything to worry about,” Scarola added. Sea turtles sometimes seem to develop nesting patterns, only to abruptly surprise researchers by doing something different, he said.
The nonprofit Sea Turtle Adventures monitors nests on 3 miles of beaches in Gulf Stream, Briny Breezes and part of Ocean Ridge. Its team found 75 green turtle nests this year versus 121 in 2019, said Jackie Kingston, president and founder of the organization.
At tranquil Highland Beach, however, which has no public access and therefore fewer human distractions, there were 285 nests, Ryan said.
Of the three species of sea turtles that nest locally, loggerheads are the most prolific. In Boca Raton, it was a below average season for them as well.
Gumbo Limbo tallied 647 loggerhead nests as of Sept. 21. That’s down from 756 last year and 913 the year before, and the fewest since 2010. Loggerheads typically finish nesting in Boca Raton by mid-August, Anderson said. “We thought we might get 800 or so.”
Maybe they liked the sand in Delray Beach better. Some 353 loggerhead nests were spotted there, easily topping the prior record of 290 in 2019 and last year’s total of 285, Scarola said.
At Highland Beach, there were 815 loggerhead nests, down from 978 last year, Ryan said.
On Kingston’s stretch of shoreline, there were 665 nests this year, almost the same as the 645 last year, she said.
Enormous leatherbacks are the first to arrive and to leave local beaches. Kingston’s team counted a record number 24 nests this year, up from 19 last year, which was the previous high.
On Boca beaches, a healthy 21 leatherback nests were counted by Gumbo Limbo, compared to 13 last year. That was the most tallied since 2015 when it found 25. Its nesting numbers date back to 1988.
In Delray Beach, 15 leatherback nests were found. That’s fewer than last year’s record of 21, but the same number as in 2019, Scarola said.
Six nests were found on Highland Beach, compared to 11 last year, Ryan said.
Leatherback nest counts are comparatively meager, because these turtles go ashore in far greater numbers to the north on Florida’s east coast. Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, for example, counted 235 leatherback nests this year on the 9.5 miles of North County beaches it monitors.
Gumbo Limbo staffers counted more false crawls this season than normal, Anderson said. This occurs when a turtle comes ashore after dark, then heads back to the ocean without laying her eggs.
Movement and lights on the beach from cellphones and flashlights, beach furniture and the presence of predators such as raccoons are among the reasons this happens. “They’re very skittish and finicky” as to where they nest, Anderson said.
This year, 60% of sea turtles’ drop-ins at Boca beaches resulted in false crawls, compared to 55% to 58% normally, Anderson said.
It was the same in Delray Beach, Scarola said.
There was about a 50% false crawl observed on beaches patrolled by Ryan in Highland Beach, and by Sea Turtle Adventures, farther north. Ryan and Kingston said that’s typical on their beaches.
Other than the leatherback record-high nest total, Kingston said, “It’s been a pretty uneventful season.”
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