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Gustav Buries Southwest Florida Turtle Nests

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By ZAC ANDERSON

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: September 5, 2008

Hurricane Gustav's eye stayed far from Southwest Florida, but the storm's waves and surge dampened the region's best sea turtle nesting season in years.

From Anna Maria Island to Charlotte Harbor, turtle volunteers and scientists are reporting hundreds of swamped, buried and washed-out nests.

Many of the underlying eggs may have drowned or washed away, experts say, a tough setback for a turtle season that had seen nests leap to roughly 3,300 in Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte counties, compared with about 2,000 a year ago.

Despite the recent losses, experts say the 2008 turtle nesting season has been unexpectedly good.

"There was a strong trend down since 1998 so this summer was a wild card," said Wilma Katz, who helps coordinate turtle watch volunteers on Manasota Key in Englewood.

"Regardless of whether the storm takes some nests out, the fact that we had a lot of nests to begin with gives us a lot of reason to hope."

Manasota Key is the top nesting destination for sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico. A strong increase in nests on the key is a positive indicator for the state, said Beth Brost, a sea turtle expert with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg.

A significant number of eggs should still be alive in unmarked nests whose protective signs were washed off. Volunteers are working to remark nests and wildlife experts are asking beachgoers to tread carefully until the nesting season ends Oct. 31.

Turtle experts and volunteers such as Katz, who monitor nests daily, estimate that about half of the region's sea turtle nests hatched before Gustav blew in Sunday. Turtles have mostly stopped laying nests by now, but hatchlings will be found on the beach through October, because eggs take up to 60 days to hatch.

Of the remaining nests, experts say it is hard to know how many are still viable.

On Manatee County's beaches, for example, of the 85 nests that had yet to hatch in Bradenton Beach, Holmes Beach and Anna Maria, 41 were washed over or washed away.

In Sarasota County, 182 nests were washed over and 97 were washed away, meaning 25 percent of the 1,130 nests from Long Boat Key to Caspersen Beach in Venice were disturbed. The figures were compiled Wednesday by Mote Marine Laboratory's Sea Turtle Conservation and Research Program.

Nests that were washed over could still produce hatchlings, but turtles buried under extra sand could have difficulty digging themselves out. Also, prolonged exposure to water destroys the embryos.

"We don't know what's out there now so it's really important to keep dogs off the beach, keep lights out, and treat it like there's still a lot of potential for these eggs to hatch," she said.

Brost said sea turtles are resilient. Eggs can survive some exposure to water, and hatchlings can dig through more sand than people might think, she said.

"Turtles have been around for a really long time," Brost said. "They've dealt with all kinds of storms."

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