TURTLE NESTS ‘ON TRACK FOR A GOOD SEASON’
Experts ask for caution from boaters; June is busiest nesting month.
JUPITER — Turtle nesting season started March 1 and wooden stakes with colored tape are popping up at Palm Beach County beaches. The most recent nest numbers for north county are in and they are looking pretty promising, according to the turtle experts.
The Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach keeps a daily counter on its website that’s updated every afternoon. As of Thursday, there are 120 leatherback, 2,189 loggerhead and two green turtle nests on beaches in Juno, Jupiter and Tequesta.
“The season is going pretty well,” said Adrienne McCracken, field operations manager for Loggerhead. “We’re on track for a good season. We are not really behind and not really ahead.”
McCracken said the center is anticipating between 10,000 and 11,000 loggerhead nests by the end of the season, despite some being washed out by Subtropical Storm Alberto.
“We did have some loss, but
it was very minimal,” said McCracken. The loss will not impact the hatchling totals, she said, adding that “sea turtles are adaptive to storms and hurricanes. That’s why they lay nests every two weeks or so.”
During a season, turtles lay about five to seven nests that have about 100 eggs each, which is why McCracken said if a few get washed away there will be plenty more.
Plus, Juno Beach has some of the “highest density of loggerhead turtle nests in the world and the United States,” said McCracken. “There is a nest about every 2½ feet.”
South of the Loggerhead Center in Juno, the nests at the MacArthur Beach State Park in North Palm Beach were not affected by Alberto.
“Most of our nests were in the middle of the beach and we didn’t get that high of waves,” said Art Carton, park services specialist at MacArthur. So the nests “weren’t really impacted,” said Carton.
MacArthur staffers collect their own nesting numbers and share the updated totals every “Turtle Tuesday” on the park’s Facebook page.
Currently, the park has 296 loggerhead and seven leatherback nests, according to Jacob Bennett, assistant park manager. Bennett said that within the next couple of months they will see green turtle nests.
Nesting season ends Oct. 31, but June is the busiest month for turtle nesting, which is why McCracken wants to remind boaters to be aware of the turtles since they are just offshore.
The leatherbacks on the beaches in Juno, Jupiter and Tequesta will start hatching any day now, and the loggerheads by the middle of June, said McCracken.
Over the next two months, people get an up-close look at the nesting process and even help with excavating some of the hatchlings, when the time comes.
The Loggerhead Center offers more than 30 different turtle-walk tours, on which people can watch as a loggerhead sea turtle begins her egg-laying process, starting June 12. For prices and dates, visit www.marinelife.org.
If you’re looking for a more hands-on volunteer option, the MacArthur Beach offers an education program where teens and adults can get trained on how to log scientific data and excavate loggerhead sea turtle nests.
MacArthur’s first hatchlings are predicted for the end of June or early July, according to Carton.
The two training dates are June 16 and 30. Staff asks those interested in attending to RSVP by calling 561624-6952.
“We will be marking every 20th nest for excavation,” said Carton. “We monitor the nests for hatch-outs. Then three to five days after we see a hatch-out, we send our volunteer teams to the nests to hand-dig and record data.”