By Nirvi Shah
See 100 photos of Ocean Ridge beach at night
Outdoor lights at 41 properties along the Ocean Ridge coastline may have led to the disorientation of more than 2,000 sea turtle hatchlings in 2008, Palm Beach County officials said.
An inspection by the county’s Environmental Resources Management department yielded a number of concerns about lighting along the town’s coast, including flood lights mounted on roofs and lights atop poles. When sea turtles hatch, artificial lighting from the beach is one of the biggest threats to their survival, said Carly DeMaye, who oversees sea turtle protection for the county. The number of disoriented turtles in Ocean Ridge in 2008 was a sizeable increase over 2007, when about 1,300 hatchlings were found to have trouble making their way to the ocean.
Ocean Ridge was told about the concerns in May. Town Manager Kenneth Schenck said property owners were notified soon after about the county’s concerns.
“The Police Department went out and met with all the residents,” he said. “They physically went out door to door. As far as we know, everything’s OK.” The 2008 county monitoring showed 20 percent of the disoriented hatchlings observed by the county were in the Boca Raton area, and 33 percent were in the Singer Island area. But DeMaye said it is difficult to compare one area to another, because monitoring methods may vary. One area may be closely monitoring lights, but not looking for disoriented hatchlings. And the lengths of one area’s coastline may differ from another.
The green and leatherback sea turtles that use Palm Beach County for nesting are endangered species. For loggerhead turtles, a threatened species, the county is home to one of the animal’s largest nesting habitats in the Western Hemisphere.
Few disoriented hatchlings are actually found dead on the beach, DeMaye said. But they may be found in parking lots or storm drains, and some are eaten by predators. The county estimates 70 percent of them do make it to the water, but tired from traveling unnecessarily, they might never make it to the relative safety of the Gulf Stream.
Of Palm Beach County’s 45 miles of coastline, the county monitors about nine miles. The rest of the coast is monitored to varying degrees by individual municipalities. Ocean Ridge was a part of the county’s efforts for the last two years because of the South Lake Worth Inlet Maintenance Dredging project, which involves placing sand on Ocean Ridge beaches, DeMaye said.
The 2008 nesting season was the last the county will monitor. But the county was awarded a $75,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and has spent the last two years monitoring coastal lighting conditions along the entire 45-mile coastline. Many municipalities have their own coastal lighting ordinances, DeMaye said, while others use the county’s. The patchwork of regulations led to lighting surveys that varied from one area to the next.
Some of the Ocean Ridge properties cited by the county had a single offending light, while others, especially multifamily buildings, had as many as 40 light fixtures that need to be turned off or swapped for a more turtle-friendly type. At Oceanfront Park, which is in Ocean Ridge but run by Boynton Beach, 13 lights were found in need of being turned off, shielded or replaced with something that wouldn’t disorient hatchlings.
DeMaye said the park is slated for renovation and the city is pursuing permits for that facelift.
“Lighting is a big part of that,” she said.
Merrilee Lundquist, of North Ocean Drive in Ocean Ridge, was upset by the survey’s findings. It found a single east-facing light as out of place at her home.
“We have one little light on to make the place look occupied,” Lundquist said. “I've been trying to be a very careful steward.”
She said the darkness around her home has led to damage to her gates. Beachgoers have helped themselves to a dip in her pool, uninvited.
“If there is something wrong, I'll try to do better.”
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