Panama City Beach Turtle Watch is entering it’s 35 season (May 1 – October 31) of protecting nesting and hatching sea turtles, under a state issued permit by FWC.
We patrol 18 miles of beach from St Andrews State Park to Camp Helen State Park. We are a non-profit organization with ATV surveyors that patrol the beaches just before sunrise looking for fresh sea turtle crawls as most nesting (and hatching) activity occurs overnight. When they find a crawl, the surveyor determines if it is a nest and if so, they contact one of our volunteers that have been through FWC and local training on how to properly identify the characteristics of the crawl and nest and mark it for protection. It takes about 2 months on our beaches for the eggs to incubate, hatch and emerge. At which time we also have volunteers checking nightly for disoriented hatchlings as artificial lighting is the number one threat to hatchling sea turtles. If disoriented hatchlings are found, they are collected and placed into the Gulf by volunteers. Volunteers then excavate the nest 3-4 days following the hatch to assess the nest contents. Throughout the season, we are gathering data and reporting it to FWC as part of their efforts to determine nesting trends and assessing the population.
While the general public may not be directly authorized to specifically help with the nest protection that our program performs, there are ways to help. Everyone can keep our beaches clean, dark and flat. Leave No Trace (local ordinance) when you leave the beach for the day (sundown to sunup), remove everything and dispose of trash properly. Keep it dark (local lighting ordinance for beachfront properties), turn off exterior lights, close your curtains, avoid using white light while on the beach (if necessary, use a red LED flashlight) and never use flash photography if you encounter a sea turtle on the beach. Lastly, leave the beaches flat, avoid leaving holes and knock down your sand castles. Doing all of this will help sea turtles avoid expending wasted energy. They are designed for the water so the fewer obstacles they face on the beach the better chance they have for nesting or hatching and then returning to the water.
The most common species nesting on PCB is the loggerhead (a threatened species), along with some greens and the occasional leatherback. We invite the everyone to follow here on our website http://turtlewatch.org or Facebook page, Panama City Beach Turtle Watch, for information throughout this season. We have closed our volunteer application process for the season but invite any locals or visitors to follow our events on Facebook. Starting mid-July, we begin announcing excavations, a chance for anyone in the area to come and watch our volunteers in action and get a chance to see the contents of a hatched nest.
If you see a sea turtle on the sandy beach, keep your distance, avoid using any light and contact us via Facebook or through PCB Police’s non-emergency phone number and they will reach out to our volunteers.
