ANNA MARIA ISLAND – Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring is celebrating green turtles breaking their 2023 record of 12 nests on Anna Maria Island.
“We now have 13 green turtle nests on the Island and hope to get even more before nesting season comes to a close,” Turtle Watch Executive Director Kristen Mazzarella wrote in a July 25 email.
The majority of turtle nests on AMI are laid by loggerhead sea turtles.
Turtle Watch volunteers were also surprised this week when they inventoried a nest that was overdue for hatching. Such a nest would usually contain unhatched eggs, but instead they found 17 live hatchlings trapped in the nest due to hard-packed sand.
“Happily, all 17 hatchlings were healthy and active and were released into the Gulf,” she wrote.
Sea turtle hatching season is in full swing, but, unfortunately, so are disorientations, Mazzarella reported.
Disorientations occur when hatchlings follow artificial light instead of the light of the night sky. Following artificial light causes the hatchlings to expend energy they need for swimming. They can wander into swimming pools or become dehydrated or get picked up by predators.
“On Anna Maria Island, since hatching began on July 3, we have had 31 hatchling disorientations involving a minimum of 1,000 of the 5,513 hatchlings that have emerged this season,” Mazzarella wrote.
“Sadly, 61 of those hatchlings were found dead.”
She asks people to help make sure hatchlings make it safely to the Gulf by turning off beach-facing lights or using turtle-friendly light bulbs and shields on exterior lights. For interior lights, she asks people to close blinds and redirect lights so they can’t be seen through windows.
“Once hatchlings have disoriented, they are often led astray even further by all the lights that couldn’t be seen from the beach, so even if your property is away from the beach, it helps to be turtle friendly,” Mazzarella wrote.
Turtle Watch has a 24/7 hotline at 941-301-8434 to call if you see an adult or hatchling turtle in distress.
