ANNA MARIA ISLAND – A 42-year record for sea turtle nests was shattered on July 2 when Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring volunteers counted 2024’s 546th nest, exceeding the 2019 record of 544 nests for the whole season.
“We broke our all-time annual nest number count this week, and considering turtles should be nesting through late August/early September, we will be breaking it by quite a bit by the end of the nesting season,” Executive Director Kristen Mazzarella wrote in a July 5 email. “We are very excited about this.”
The sea turtle nesting season extends from May 1 to Oct. 31, but began early.
Mazzarella said that Turtle Watch volunteers have been putting in extra hours on the beach and painting nest stakes to mark the new nests.
“We are excited that so many sea turtles have decided to nest on Anna Maria,” she said. “We can thank the conservation efforts of patrollers that protected nests 25 years ago for producing the hatchlings that are coming ashore (as adults) to nest in such high numbers this year.”
Loggerhead sea turtles take 25-35 years to reach maturity.
Turtle Watch recorded the first nest hatch of this season on June 29 in Anna Maria, and, as of July 5, there have been seven nest hatches.
“When they emerge from the sand, baby turtles (hatchlings) follow the brightest horizon to find their way to the water. Artificial lighting that can be seen from the beach can draw hatchlings away from the Gulf and into harm’s way,” according to Mazzarella. “In order to ensure that this incredible number of nests results in a record number of hatchlings making it to the water, we need to do our best to provide a turtle-friendly beach.”
