Last night while one set of volunteers was off marking our newest nest, our hatching volunteers received a call about a nest hatching!
Here on PCB, we have very high levels of hatchling disorientation due to artificial beachfront lighting. Our hatching volunteers have been trained by FWC and our local permit holder on procedures for recovering disoriented hatchlings. When a nest has been on the beach about 2 months, volunteers will visit it briefly at night looking for signs of any disoriented hatchlings. We only use red lights when we are on the beach and if turtles are present we try to refrain from even the red light. We ask that beachgoers do the same thing if you are on the beach with a nesting or hatching sea turtle. Think of it like this….you are driving down the road and someone has their bright headlights on “blinding” you OR you are outside at night and someone takes a flash photo of you and now you are “seeing stars”, well that is what it is like for the sea turtles when we shine lights towards them. They then become disoriented and waste precious energy.
You have heard it before
Clean, Dark and Flat
that is what we should strive for on our beaches!
Now that we are in hatching season, we will conduct excavations following a hatch (or when the nest has gone beyond a reasonable incubation period). Stay tuned to Facebook for those events, we will try to give notice a couple days in advance following a hatch. Again, we can’t predict what will hatch tonight, much less a few weeks for now. So stay tuned for excavation announcements via the Events section.
We thank our volunteers in advance for the hours, days and weeks they are committing to helping our protected sea turtles here on PCB. They won’t be able to tell you where a nest is or when a nest will hatch, but they will be able to tell you why they are there and answer questions if you see them on the beach and they aren’t consumed in rescuing hatchlings.
