March brings five minutes of spring to subtropical South Florida.
It also heralds eight months of sea turtle nesting season, which usually draws more than 20,000 female loggerhead, leatherback, Kemp’s ridley and hawksbill turtles to Palm Beach County shores to dig nests and lay their eggs in a cycle that has continued for millennia.
That annual cycle also brings out teams of professionals and volunteers who devote their mornings to monitoring and tagging nests, ensuring that obstacles to nesting are cleared and making sure lighting that might confuse hatchlings is redirected.
Here’s a look at the people who monitor our shores, ensuring that cycle that has continued for thousands of years can continue uninterrupted, at least in southern Palm Beach County.
Rebecca Germany, sea turtle conservation assistant at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, washes the ATV used for turtle monitoring following her early morning beach patrol.
Ecological Associates Inc. environmental monitor Michelle Simpson clears sargassum from a leatherback turtle nest in Delray Beach. It was the first recorded turtle nest in the state in 2023. The eggs were laid in a nest so early in the season, Feb. 16, that it caught EAI personnel off guard and they needed to involve Gumbo Limbo in the marking of the nest because they did not have their equipment on hand for the season. Simpson has worked as a turtle monitor for four years, with this being her first year with EAI. The group is responsible for a little over three miles along Delray Beach.
Lexie Dvoracek logs disorienting and distracting lighting conditions during her first lighting survey of the 2023 turtle nesting season along the shore at Gulf Stream. Dvoracek is the conservation program manager for Sea Turtle Adventures.
EAI environmental monitor Michelle Simpson has a tattoo of a leatherback on her right leg and another turtle tattoo on her left wrist.
Photos by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
Comments