Loggerhead hatchlings make their way to the Gulf

A loggerhead sea turtle nest hatched at approximately 6 a.m. Tuesday morning in Walton County. About 70 loggerhead hatchlings ran to the Gulf.

Wendy Victora of Florida Freedom Newspapers recently wrote this report about the endangered turtles.

SEAGROVE BEACH - For the second year in a row, a leatherback turtle has nested in Seagrove Beach.
Leatherbacks, the largest living turtle, are listed as endangered worldwide.

The nest, discovered Aug. 6 by a South Walton Turtle Watch volunteer, is only three houses away from last year's nest.

Christian Wagley, who has volunteered for Turtle Watch for the last four years, found the nest while walking a stretch of beach from the old Seagrove Village Motel west to Grayton Beach State Park.

He said he was looking for turtles and signs that turtles had nested when he found "this mother track where it looked like somebody drove a little bulldozer up the beach."

"It was much bigger than we were used to," he said. "I knew it was a leatherback only because I found a leatherback last summer almost at the same spot.

Turtle Watch Coordinator Sharon Maxwell said that leatherbacks return to the area where they were hatched to lay their eggs. The fact that the two nests are so close together suggests that the females may have hatched at the same time.

"I figure they were sisters," Maxwell said. She added that leatherbacks don't lay eggs every year, which suggests that two different females chose nearly the same spot.

Leatherback turtles leave distinctive marks in the sand when they drag themselves up on the shore with their flippers to nest.

The width of the track from this year's sojourn was 84 inches, Maxwell said. That's nearly three times the width of the average loggerhead's track.

Last year's nest was dug July 17, which was early enough in the season to allow the babies to hatch and make their way into the Gulf of Mexico.

Maxwell said that this year's timing is more problematic.

With the summer's intense heat waning, it will likely take more than the usual 60-day period for the eggs to hatch.

"We're hopeful, but cautious," Maxwell said. "We've had trouble with late-hatching nests.

"Because they're reptiles and cold-blooded, they come out of that little cocoon, hit the top of the sand. It's cold and they just lay there. They're done," she said. "We've had to take hatchlings and warm them up, wash the sand out of their eyes."

Turtle Watch volunteers will continue to monitor the nest, which is clearly marked with signs indicating that leatherbacks are a federally protected species.

Wagley said that all sea turtle species are endangered, and that the number of nests has steadily been declining over the years due largely to human intrusion into their habitat, including lighting on beaches that disorients them.

"Sea turtles need dark, quiet beaches in order to nest successfully, and every year there are fewer beaches like that," he added.