Two species set all-time records in Boca Raton
By Steve Plunkett
With the exception of Delray Beach, mama sea turtles this year set records up and down the shoreline in south Palm Beach County.
In Boca Raton, two of the three species that nest along its 5 miles of shoreline broke all-time nesting records, said David Anderson, who leads the city’s sea turtle conservation team.
“This year, we recorded 43 leatherback nests, surpassing the previous record of 33 set in 2012,” Anderson said. “Loggerheads also set a new record, with 1,118 nests, exceeding the previous high of 1,075 recorded in 1990.”
The third species, green sea turtles, had only an “average” year, with 154 nests, he said.
Sea turtle nesting season runs March 1 through Oct. 31.
In neighboring Highland Beach, the nest totals were also robust, with leatherbacks doubling their number from 10 to 20 nests and loggerheads digging 763 nests, up from 723 in 2025.
Greens dropped from 513 to 246 nests, in tune with their usual pattern of a high number in odd-numbered years followed by a low number in even-numbered years.
“As you can see, it was a good year for both the leatherback and loggerhead,” said Joanne Ryan, head of the town’s volunteer squad of nest monitors for roughly 3 miles of beach.
But in Delray Beach, “we experienced a somewhat slower nesting season this year for all three sea turtle species compared to last year,” said Joseph Scarola, a senior scientist with Jensen Beach-based Ecological Associates Inc., which handles the turtle census for the city.
“Overall, we recorded 196 loggerhead nests, 15 green turtle nests, and 10 leatherback nests in 2026, compared to 300 loggerhead nests, 60 green turtle nests, and 19 leatherback nests in 2025,” Scarola said.
Part of the reason for the lower numbers, he said, was a window for nesting activity more than a month shorter.
“The first crawl of the season was a leatherback nest recorded on March 3, 2026, while the last crawl was a green turtle nest documented on Aug. 31, 2026,” Scarola said. “By comparison, the first crawl recorded in 2025 was a leatherback nest on Feb. 25, 2025, and the final crawl was a loggerhead false crawl on Oct. 4, 2025.”
A “false crawl” occurs when a female turtle crawls up on the sand but returns to the Atlantic Ocean before depositing her eggs.
The folks at Sea Turtle Adventures, who monitor nests for about 3 miles through Gulf Stream, the County Pocket, Briny Breezes and part of Ocean Ridge, were happy with their nesting season totals.
The number of leatherback nests tripled, soaring from 16 last year to 51 this year. Loggerheads rose to 661 from 481, and greens declined from 155 to 113.
“Overall, we had a great turtle season, and we were all ecstatic about the number of leatherback sea turtle nests we got,” said Emilie Woodrich, the group’s data manager. “We blew our previous record of 19 out of the water.”
Back in Boca Raton, a total 1,315 nests were documented, making 2026 the third-highest nesting season since 1987, when the city began continuously monitoring all 5 miles of its beach.
“The increase in leatherback nests was particularly noteworthy, with a 30% increase over the previous record. Leatherbacks are much less common on Florida beaches than loggerheads, making this record especially significant,” Anderson said.
This year’s impressive nest numbers “are undoubtedly the result of decades of education, conservation and monitoring,” he said, calling the loggerhead results “the season’s biggest headline.”
“Their 1,118 nests were substantially higher than Boca Raton’s recent 10-year average of 847 nests,” Anderson said. “Considering the lowest loggerhead nesting year on record was just 361 nests in 2009, the gradual increase over the past 17 years is truly remarkable.”
Hatchlings and eggs lost
Despite the healthy numbers of nests dug and hatched, there was cause for concern. After the eggs hatch, the turtle monitors inventory the contents to examine a nest’s success.
“The success of the nests wasn’t so great,” Anderson said.
His team took inventory of more than 900 nests this season and found that on average, only 50% of the eggs hatched.
“This is mainly due to sand temperatures exceeding the thermal tolerance level of developing embryos. We had a particularly long hot and dry period this summer causing some nests to not even hatch at all,” Anderson said.
In addition, Boca lost 182 nests from storms and late September/early October king tides. Another 129 nests were dug into by foxes, raccoons and a few coyotes, of which 13 nests were total predations.
And his team documented 86 nests in which hatchlings were disoriented by artificial light pollution. Lights from beachfront properties and the glow in the sky produced by urbanized southeast Florida can disorient hatchlings, causing them to crawl away from the ocean and increasing their risk of death.
“A conservative estimate of losing 25 hatchlings per disoriented nest means we lost over 2,000 hatchlings due to lighting,” Anderson said.
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