The 2024 sea turtle nesting was challenging thanks to a lot of weather events. Of the 109 nests on Fort Myers Beach this season, 28 hatched and 23 drowned. Yesterday was the official end to the 2024 turtle nesting season.
The weather events started June 11-13th with a historical amount of rainfall that inundated the early nests, causing many of the developing embryos to succumb in the eggs, according to Turtle Time’s Eve Haverfield.
Then Tropical Storm Debby hit, washing away 52 nests. Hurricane Helene finished off the remaining 6 nests on Fort Myers Beach.
In addition to the 109 nests documented by Turtle Time there were 238 false crawls on Fort Myers Beach. 1,140 hatchlings (21%) successfully reached the gulf. Considering that only 1 to 4 hatchlings out of a thousand hatchlings survives to adulthood, this has not been a stellar year for the turtles.
To quote Meghan Koperski of FWC: “Yes, storms have an impact on sea turtles, and we understand that it is hard to accept that some hatchlings may perish due to over wash, erosion, or inundation, but these are natural processes. Sea turtles have adapted their nesting strategy to accommodate for natural events such as hurricanes. Each nesting female turtle deposits several nests throughout the duration of the nesting
season – essentially “hedging her bets” to make sure that even if a storm hits at some point during the nesting season, there is a high probability that at least a few of her nests will incubate successfully without being impacted by a storm. No storm season is a total loss for sea turtles.”
The nests on Bonita Beach fared a bit better because the beach is more elevated, left natural and therefore drains better, according to Haverfield. “We marked 136 nests and 217 false crawls. The hatch success rate was 74% meaning that 8,252 hatchlings reached the gulf.”
Haverfield added that she wants to “Thank all the wonderful volunteers, businesses, residents and visitors who helped us and the sea turtles through a difficult summer.”
TLM = Turtle Lives Matter 🐢
Rather it’s mother nature, storms, the turtle nestings are part of our eco system and it is a big deal to lots of Florida residents. Just as the red tide and all the dead fish are a part of the system. It is sad when these things happen. Pray for the best next season.
Mother Nature doesn’t care about the turtles or their nests! Why are we making a big fuss over them? What happens will happen and there’s nothing that you or I or anyone can do about it
wOw 🤦♀️
This is awful. There needs to be more regulations.
I really hope you are kidding. Since the hurricane many people are still not able to live in their condos, not many people seem to care about them..Mike
P.S. I don’t think the government can regulate mother nature.
This was heartbreaking news