Panama City Beach Turtle Watch

Our 2024 season has officially come to a close as we wrapped up all activities involved in operating under our FWC issued marine turtle permits.

We’d like to thank all of our surveyors, volunteers, local agencies, residents and visitors who played a role in the protection of the Loggerhead sea turtles in Panama City Beach, FL during our 2024 season.

We had 34 loggerhead nests on the beach this season stretching from our eastern to western boundaries. Volunteers witnessed nesting loggerheads and were able to apply passive tags on four nesting loggerheads! We endured nest impacts (development stopped/eggs washed out) from tropical storm Alberto and from hurricanes Francine and Helene that made landfall in other areas of the Gulf coast. We appreciate the help from our local police, code enforcement and our local lifeguards. We enjoyed the opportunity to share information about our program and sea turtles at local events, schools and excavations.

Below we have recapped some of our 2024 season highlights. We look forward to being ready to start our season again May 1, 2025!

All work/photos conducted under MTP-038, MTP-271, MTP-286

Today we celebrated our 2024 Panama City Beach Turtle Watch team. Our 2024 team dedicated many hours this season to help protect sea turtles and they deserve to be celebrated! A special thank you to Pompano Joe’s Panama City Beach for allowing us to celebrate our 2024 season as we gathered to enjoy drinks, appetizers, a great view and socializing.

PS Be sure to stop by and try one of Pompano Joe’s Turtle Brews or grab one of their t-shirts as they are a great partner with making a donation to our program yearly from those sales.

As we prepare to wrap up our season, we wanted to offer a chance for those of you unable to purchase merchandise in person this season a chance to purchase online!
Online PCB Turtle Watch merchandise sales are now available through Sunday October 13, 2024 (or when supplies/sizes are depleted)!

Many of you have asked how you can purchase one of our Turtle Watch t-shirts, hats/visors or reusable bags online and have it shipped. Well now is your chance!
For a limited time between now and Sunday October 13, 2024 you can place your order and we will fulfill those orders first come, first serve.

Please see the order form for more information.

Don’t miss your chance, this is a one time opportunity as we wrap up our 2024 season! We appreciate your support this season🐢

Our education outreach team partnered with Gulf World Marine Institute to host an outreach session for Girl Scout Troop 103 from Tallahassee. They were visiting PCB to learn about sea turtles and they all have a strong affinity for marine life (they have toured other marine life facilities). During this visit, they earned their Water Badge after seeing our educational specimens, hearing about our program and sea turtle species common to this area. They also observed the GWMI rehabilitation activities for sea turtles including treatments being performed on a loggerhead patient. We are inspired by the passion this group of ladies had for marine life and who knows, maybe they will one day be professionals in the field or volunteers themselves!

PCB Turtle Watch has now completed their remake of the Disney movie “Holes”.  We had 8 nests that suffered from washover and/or accretion from Tropical Storm Alberto mid June that stopped the development of the eggs.  None of these nests showed signs of having hatched so as each one reached day 80 from being laid they were excavated to locate and count the number of eggs.  These excavations were not announced to the public and our lead excavator enticed volunteers to attend under the guise of a free boot camp, focused on an upper body workout.  Some of these nests had over 3 feet of accretion that had to be moved just to reach the original beach level to then dig another 2 foot looking for the eggs.  After many hours of moving many cubic yards of sand, digging out completely buried nest stakes and caution/survey tape and filling the holes back in, we have now excavated all of these failed nests.  We appreciate the hours and physical effort put forth by every one of our volunteers that helped us during these excavations.  We always appreciate our volunteers but to willingly sign up night after night for these excavations receives an extra special Thank You!

Excavation of these 8 nests revealed 506 unhatched eggs that showed little to no development. Sea turtles can nest 3-7 times in a season so while these nests weren’t successful, we’d like to think other nests laid by these females have or will have much better results this season. Stay up to date on total number of nests hatched and hatchings that have emerged here on our website, we are at over 1600 hatchlings so far this season!

Activities performed under MTP-038

Our volunteers have stayed busy the last week with nests hatching every few days, around incubation day 55. Many hatchlings have been disoriented requiring they be recovered and released on a darker part of our beach. After a nest hatches, an excavation is scheduled to assess the nest contents with the excavation and results being announced on Facebook.

This week we will reach the day 80 mark for several nests that were impacted by Tropical Storm Alberto. Three of these nests suffered a good deal of wash over due to high surf and 2-3 foot of additional sand being placed on the nest. Others had washout or washover that likely stopped the development of the eggs. Volunteers will schedule private excavations of these nests to try to locate the eggs to at least determine how many had been laid. These nests are numbered in the teens, so we hope that those females returned weeks later here in the Panhandle to lay some other nests that are having better hatch success.

We appreciate all of the hours our volunteers are spending now on hatching monitoring, recovery and excavations!

We are well into our hatching season with nest 23 having recently hatched!

We continue checking the beach in the mornings for new nests but have not had any recently and remain at 34 nests having been marked for protection this season. On the flip side we are having nests hatch every couple of days at this point, commonly occurring overnight. Our volunteers have been trained by FWC on rescue and recovery of disoriented hatchlings. We have had a couple of nests where the hatchlings made it to the water unassisted but we have had many more nests hatch where the hatchlings have been disoriented and rescued and released that same evening by volunteers. Our volunteers then excavate the nest 3-4 days after a hatch to determine the hatch success based on the nest contents which will then be reported to FWC. We announce public excavations via our Facebook page Events section and we stream on Panama City Beach Turtle Watch Facebook or post videos/photos as a way to keep everyone updated on the results so stay tuned there for those details. We do have several nests that experienced washover and sand accretion that may have slowed or stopped development of the eggs. We will conduct private excavations of those when the time comes. In the meantime we’ll stay busy with the remaining non-washed over nests!

Everyone can do their part in by leaving the beaches clean, dark and flat. Every little bit can help and make a difference for this protected species.

Weekend survey mornings just won’t be the same…for two seasons Gabriel Walsingham, a GCSC student, has conducted weekend morning ATV surveys for our PCB TW program. He showed up before sunrise ready to work, found crawls, recorded the required data and coordinated with volunteers to mark nests. He also checked on the nests daily and recorded data for hatched nests. Gabriel became familiar with and protected our local shore birds and other wildlife species along the way. We wish Gabriel the best as he continues his studies as a new University of Central Florida student!

We were honored to participate in the Science and Discovery Center’s Pirates and Mermaids camp this past week. Our volunteers shared information about our program and then allowed the campers to see some of the specimens up close. Young minds are like sponges and the campers were attentive and had the opportunity to learn about Sea Turtles and ways we can all help protect them.

In anticipation of high surf/surge this week we’d like to share some info that may be useful while you are visiting our beaches.

As per this year’s FWC permit guidelines, we leave nests in place when they are found and mark them for protection in their original location. That may put the nest at risk of wash-over or wash-out the two plus months it is incubating on the beach. If you see any exposed eggs (they look like ping pong balls) leave them where they are and contact us here on Facebook or via non-emergency PCB Police at 850-233-5000 and we’ll have our volunteers respond. Each nest is marked with a green tag that has the nest number, we’ll need that info and/or your location.

Our surveyors check the nests at least 4 times a day but having extra sets of eyes on our nests never hurts, so thank you for reporting any eggs you may see. But please, never replace any of the stakes or dig for the eggs, our volunteers will assess the situation and take care of it.

Sea turtles lay nests approximately every 2 weeks during the season. So while a couple of nests may be impacted, we’ll hope that the others are very successful!

Photo: Nest from a previous season that eroded and had exposed eggs

Work performed under MTP-038