Sea-turtle nests rising in Georgia

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Loggerhead sea turtles nested on Georgia beaches at a recordsetting pace in 2013, marking a fourth straight year conservationists have reported a nesting increase along the state’s 100-mile coast.

Unofficial tallies for the loggerhead nesting season, which runs from May through August in Georgia, show the turtles dug at least 2,284 nests to lay their eggs. That’s up from 2,241 nests counted last year.

More importantly, the numbers show nesting in the state by the threatened species has continued to increase every year since 2010, bucking a two-decade trend of up-anddown fluctuations.

Last year the Georgia Department of Natural Resources declared for the first time that the state’s loggerhead population seemed to be recovering after 24 years of conservation efforts. Seeing nest numbers increase to another record level in 2013 adds more evidence the turtles are rebounding, said Mark Dodd, the biologist who heads Georgia’s sea-turtle recovery program.

Loggerhead sea turtles, which weigh up to 300 pounds, remain a fragile population that’s been protected as a threatened species under federal law for 35 years. The turtles dig their nests on beaches from the Carolinas to Florida. Georgia’s relatively small stretch of coastline means it has one of the region’s smallest sea-turtle nesting populations.

Still, the nesting counts for Georgia in recent years have been astounding considering its beaches averaged just 1,036 nests annually from 1989 to 2009, a period when up-anddown nest counts indicated recovery was flat. In 2010 loggerhead nests in Georgia hit a record of 1,760. Then they jumped to 1,992 in 2011. And for the past two years the total has been more than double the state’s 20-year average.