We are excited to announce we have located and marked for protection our first 2024 sea turtle nest on Panama City Beach!
Overnight May 13th, a Loggerhead, came ashore and nested 🐢
Loggerheads are the most common nesting sea turtle on PCB but we have hopes of receiving Green and Leatherback nests this season as well! We’re open to a Kemp’s Ridley nesting as well which would be a first for our program.
What should you do if you encounter a sea turtle at night on the beach? Avoid using any lights, keep your distance, stay out of her line of sight and call local non-emergency police at 850-233-5000 so they can contact our volunteers. Sea turtles can be very sensitive to light and sound. The nesting female had to work hard to crawl onto the beach to nest considering she was designed for the water, so let’s do our part to not disturb her! Our surveyors begin patrol just before sunrise looking for sea turtle crawls so if you see a nesting turtle or a crawl, please avoid the area so we have the best look possible to assess the crawl when our surveyors or volunteers arrive.
Having located our first nest, we can now congratulate Melissa Taylor. Melissa submitted our 2024 First Nest Prediction form and she predicted our first nest very closely in all categories for date, time, species and location! Thanks to everyone that participated in that fun game!
Per the FWC permit we operate under, we don’t announce the nest locations or predicted hatch dates. So stay tuned during the season here for our nesting and hatching progress. Public excavation events will be posted on Facebook as they are scheduled following a hatch.
Check out this great informational poster about Loggerheads care of Sea Turtle Conservancy
All activities performed under MTP-038.
