Author: pcbturtle

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

Our volunteers are busy and they are loving it! We continue to find new sea turtle nests and expect to do so for the next few weeks. At the same time, with nests having been on the beach for 2+ months now we are experiencing hatches.

Nesting and hatching typically happen overnight. Please refrain from using any light around a sea turtle. White light and flash photos can be temporarily blinding to them leading to disturbance and disorientation. While you are on the beach, FWC recommends the use of red LED flashlights, give them a try you’ll find your eyes adjust a lot better as well with the red LED flashlight. Also turn off your exterior lights and leave your curtains/blinds closed to reduce interior lights from causing any disorientation.

If you do encounter a nesting turtle please call PCB Police non-emergency at 850-233-5000. If you encounter any hatchlings, you can call them or call the number on the blue sign posted at the nest. Either contact method will reach our volunteers so they can respond. Then stand away from the turtle(s) and give them space.

We don’t post nest locations or when a nest might hatch and quite frankly we don’t know for sure, it’s nature. Our volunteers even miss the hatch a lot of the time because it can happen anytime and can be quick once it starts.

What we will post is any excavations that we can invite the public to attend. Stay tuned to the Events section of our Facebook page for those announcements. If you can’t join us in person, check our page around that time and we’ll try to stream live on Facebook with the video available for replay later.

Now that our 2024 hatching has started we would like to recognize two of our volunteers heavily involved in our hatching activities.

At the beginning of this season Nancy Evou and Betsy Straley were both recognized by Panama City Beach Turtle Watch with Lifetime Achievement awards recognizing their long running contributions to our program. To relate their years of service to sea turtles, the hatchlings that they helped in their first year could very well be returning to our beaches now or in a few years to lay their own nests!

Our program has been in place since 1991 and let’s just say these two volunteers have done it all! They have contributed countless hours each year and we hope they are able to continue for many more!

In her recent volunteer years, Betsy is out on the beach at night as part of the hatching monitoring team. She also helps with our education outreach initiatives and strandings (sick, injured or deceased sea turtles).

Nancy is involved in just about every aspect of PCB TW. Her volunteer efforts are most often seen through the education outreach, strandings and very much so all of the nest excavations!

We are very appreciative of all of the efforts and hours that Nancy and Betsy give to our program and look forward to having them on our team for many years ahead!

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.

Our teams had an exciting evening Thursday night. While the Leave No Trace enforcement team was patrolling the beach their wildlife observer, driving their UTV close to the high tide line (per FWC permit), spotted fresh sea turtle tracks. They stopped and found a loggerhead in the process of laying eggs. About that time, our volunteers were receiving a call from non-emergency beach police dispatch as someone had seen the nesting turtle and called to report it so they headed to the nest.

The wildlife observer, operating under a permit from FWC, was able to check the nesting loggerhead for any existing passive tags, but none were found. They were able to install tags, so if this nesting loggerhead is encountered anywhere else and the tags are reported to the tag tracking team, there will be a record of when and where the turtle was seen. During this process, beachgoers joined to watch the process, in aww of her size and the entire nesting process. She covered her nest and returned to the water. She may have already nested here in the panhandle this season and may nest again, as they can lay a nest every 2 weeks. Volunteers marked the nest for protection, nest 31!

We very much appreciate all beachgoers looking out for the well being of our nesting and hatching sea turtles. Please remember to refrain from using white light, red light was used sparingly during the tagging process and then no lights. Even without using lights everyone was able to see the turtle and what she was doing thanks to the moon glow.

It’s a date our volunteers have been waiting for….it’s been 2 months since the first nest of the season was laid on PCB and that means we should be entering our hatching season any night now!

Here on Panama City Beach, we have a high level of hatchling disorientation with hatchlings going towards artificial lighting instead of the shimmering Gulf of Mexico.  Our volunteers received training from FWC and our local program to aid or rescue hatchlings if they are disoriented.  No one other than permitted volunteers can handle hatchlings but there are ways that anyone along our 18 miles of beach can help protect hatchlings.  Please help us reduce artificial lighting on the beach, especially if you have noticed a marked nest in the area. Clean, dark and flat is the best environment for hatchlings.

Clean: Leave No Trace, remove all of your belongings and trash from the beach each night
Dark: Keep exterior beach visible lights off and blinds/curtains drawn to reduce interior light visibility, reduce flashlight usage and use red LED flashlights if needed
Flat: Fill in holes and knock down sand castles (this prevents sea turtles from wasting energy struggling as the cross the sand)

Please refrain from touching any hatchlings and do not disturb their nest area.  We know that we have many visitors on the beach so we have various signs, as shown in these photos, to try to share these messages so we can all do our part to help protect the sea turtles on our beaches.

We don’t announce nest locations or predicted hatch dates.  What we will announce is an excavation which will take place 3-4 days after a hatch (we don’t know any further in advance than that).  Where possible, we’ll invite the public to attend the excavation and we’ll also attempt to go live on Facebook for those unable to attend in person.

Thank you in advance to our hatching volunteers for the many hours they are about to spend between now and late October helping to protect the hatchlings on PCB!

While we don’t have any hatchlings on our beach just yet we wanted to take a moment to point out there are shorebird chicks in the area!

For years now, Panama City Beach has been chosen as a nesting grounds by Federal and State protected Least Terns and Black Skimmers.  These nesting shorebirds who have traveled many miles to get here like many of you.  They primarily nest in the same area of the beach annually and those areas are marked and protected by FWC Shorebird Monitors.  Chicks commonly wander outside of posted nesting areas and are thus vulnerable to any type of activity taking place nearby. Please watch your step near these sites, and never enter the posted areas. If you’re being dive bombed, you’re too close!

Photos taken with a telephoto lens and then cropped

We now share with you the conclusion of the recent morning where our surveyor found multiple loggerhead sea turtle crawls.

You, the nesting loggerhead, have made two attempts to nest in the last several hours. You are determined to find a good spot on PCB to lay your nest. You swim another two plus miles once again deciding to give it another try. You emerge from the water, crawl about 40 feet and reach a sandy slope from a recent escarpment (vertical wall formed by wave action) in which you are able to scale with ease. You begin digging your body pit but the sand doesn’t feel quite right. You scoot forward another 20 feet and try again, finally everything feels right this time. You settle in and dig the chamber with your rear flippers, deposit ~100 eggs, cover the nest, make a turn and head back to the water. After a long night with two false crawls, you have traveled over 5 miles in the water and have now successfully nested.

Soon our PCB Turtle Watch morning surveyor will find your nest and is able to predict you are the same turtle that had the other two false crawls found this morning based on the crawl width, one of the data points we gather for each crawl we find. This particular female could have already nested on our beaches here in the panhandle prior to this nest and she may nest again as they can lay every two weeks resulting in between 3 and 7 nests in a season. Often when we observe a false crawl, we will find a corresponding nest crawl the same day or within the next day or two. If the sea turtle has made an attempt, there is a good chance she will keep trying until successful within a few days. The video explains the rest, this nest is now marked for protection and will remain on the beach until it hatches and is excavated to determine the hatch success.

Thanks for tuning into our multi-part story of one of our nesting loggerheads this season. We share this information with you in an effort to educate as many people as possible on sea turtle behaviors and how we can all help protect them.

If you encounter a sea turtle on our sandy beaches, please contact PCB non-emergency at 850-233-5000 and they will dispatch our volunteers. Please leave our beaches clean, dark and flat to provide the best nesting environment possible for these protected species!

Activities performed under MTP-038