Roller coaster turtle-nesting season in Florida
It was a year with a record-breaking number of nests and a record-breaking number of false crawls. It was also a year with an extremely high number of nests lost to storms, heat and coyotes. The 2023 turtle nesting season ends Oct. 31, leaving turtle experts looking back on this roller coaster season on local beaches.
Bonita Beach was one of the few areas that didn’t break a record for nests laid, but Eve Haverfield, founder and president of Turtle Time is actually happy about that,
“Fort Myers Beach and Bonita Beach were very low,” she explained. Fort Myers Beach had a lot of construction projects and Bonita Beach was a mess. It was just a nightmare. We are actually relieved that we did not have record numbers.”
Haverfield said Hurricane Ian left its mark on the local beaches, and that is why she believes this season had lower nest numbers. She said the storm left Bonita Beach flatter than in past years, and that means the water does not drain as well.
“It was very flat, and that is not how Bonita Beach usually is,” Haverfield explained.
She expects things to get better there “Nature will heal itself,” she said. "Nature will bring in sand. It will get filled up again. It will just take some time.”
Bonita Beach had 151 nests this year, far fewer than the 283 laid last year, but nowhere near as bad as the record low of 22 nests laid in 2005. Fort Myers Beach had 71 nests this year, lower than the 109 last year, but much more than the eight laid in 2007.
Lovers Key State Park had 37 nests, way down from the 120 last year. Park officials say Hurricane Idalia washed out 19 of those nests and three others were killed by predators.
Haverfield thinks the mother turtles simply went a bit south to Collier County or north to Sanibel and Captiva which all had record breaking nest numbers. And they didn’t have to travel too far. Just over the county line at Barefoot Beach in Bonita there was a record breaking 255 nests, up from 225 last year. Overall Collier County had a whopping 2,155 nests this year, the first time they have broken the 2,000 barrier. Sanibel had a record breaking 904 nests while Captiva set a new record of 299. While these records sound great, the storms, heat and coyotes devastated so many nests, that the number of hatchings actually reaching the Gulf is down from previous years. Collier County had about 1,588 nests hatch. On Captiva Island only nine percent of the nests were successful. On Sanibel, 29 percent hatched on the eastern end of the island and 34 percent on the west end. Turtle experts pinned the low hatch success on a number of problems.
“We had a record nesting year, but not a record hatching year,” said Maura Kraus, Principal Environmental Specialist for Collier County. “Idalia came at the wrong time. We still had nests on the beach. Idalia came during August on a full moon high tide, so Idalia really screwed us up.”
While Ian was a much worse storm last year, it happened at the end of September when most of the nests already hatched. Idalia was in August when so many nests were still on the beach. Kraus also blames Hurricane Ian for this year’s hurdles. State law usually prohibits construction on beaches during turtle nesting season, but under the executive emergency order following Hurricane Ian, work was allowed on the beaches year round. That meant pipes and construction equipment, often blocked a mother turtle’s path. Then there were the coyotes.
“After Ian the coyotes just came in,” Kraus said.
Keewaydin Island had a huge coyote problem.
“We did have a significant coyote problem out there,” said Kathy Worley, Director of Environmental Science and a biologist for the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. “The coyotes would actually hit a lot of the nests, and we were recaging a lot of them to prevent further predation.”
Worley said years ago they had coyotes on the island, but they have not had a problem with them in recent years until now.
“Before this year our major predators were raccoons and hogs, and this year it was mostly coyotes,” Worley said.
Marco Island saw coyotes for the first time.
“We have never had a problem with coyotes on Marco, ever,” Kraus said.
Still Kraus is proud of the high number of nests.
“We have been doing this for over 30 years, and it takes 30 years for the turtles reach maturity,” she explained. “We are seeing the results of people’s compliance and helping. It is all the efforts. There were a high number of nests across the state of Florida.”
Kelly Sloan, wildlife director and sea turtle program coordinator for the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation, agreed it was exciting to see so many nests and devastating to see so few hatchlings.
“It was an incredible site out there,” Sloan said about the number of nests. “Our volunteers leave a little before sunrise during peak season, and they weren’t getting back until after 4 p.m. We have to mark, screen and collect the data.”
Then came the sad part.
“It was not a good year for hatchings especially on Captiva,” she said. “Our coyote predation rate was up this year. It was a really hot summer, and I think that had an impact on our hatches. And we had some washover on the nests.”
Sloan said when the sand gets above 33 Celsius (91.4 Fahrenheit) the embryos die because it is too hot, and she believes that happened with some of the nests,
“The coyotes learned to dig around the screens this year, so now we have to dig a trench around the nest and put the screen in it which is very labor intense,” Sloan continued. “Hopefully we don’t have to do it again next year.”
Yet Sloan is still optimistic since the number of nests is so high.
“One big year doesn’t mean that the population is recovering, but in Southwest Florida the trend does show it is increasing, and that can be contributed to decades of conservation,” she concluded.