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
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!
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
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.
just in case our surveyors or volunteers needed some extra help finding our latest nest, they could follow the rainbow (photo care of our volunteer team that marked nest 33 today)
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.
Photo taken with night sight mode with no flash or lights, vehicle in the background is the Leave No Trace vehicle that patrols the beach using red headlights. MTP-038
What a week our volunteers had!
They marked 6 loggerhead nests this week (we are at 23 nests so far as we approach the midpoint of our nest laying season).
In addition to volunteers responding to mark new nests found by surveyors this week, they responded to storm impacted nests which involved salvaging exposed eggs (sucked out by waves) and burying them at the dunes in a new marked nest as well as visiting several previously marked nests to bury stakes that had been washed away, as well as to install new stakes and caution tape at nests that have had so much sand accretion that the original stakes could barely be seen.
We are currently experiencing high tides that are impacting many of our nests. When a nest receives too much water at once, it can stop the development of the eggs. Since we don’t know how much is too much or what actually reaches those buried eggs, per the FWC permit we operate under we leave the nest marked for up to 80 days from when it was laid. If a washed over nest doesn’t hatch (it usually takes 2 months) we’ll give it until day 80 just in case the incubation time was slowed down due to the water. If it doesn’t hatch by then we’ll excavate it to determine the stage of development the eggs reached, which will likely coincide with this week’s high tide event.
This week we anticipate some additional impact to some of our nests as we continue to see tides/surge higher on the beach then it has been. While this past week’s volunteers get some rest from all of their efforts, we have a new team ready to respond to any reports of nesting turtles, new nests or storm impacted nests.
All of our official volunteer spots are full and everyone has received FWC training. But you can help us out….if you are on the beach and see a nesting turtle contact PCB Police non-emergency 850-233-5000 or if you see any storm impacted nests contact us via Facebook messenger. This week we had several calls from beachgoers that provided us with reports that we were able to respond to quickly, we appreciate those reports!
All activities performed under MTP-038
Volunteers marking a newly laid nest. We fill out a form which includes a crawl diagram as the direction of the crawl and the turtle’s behavior that we can read from the sand gives us clues about where the nest may be located so we can protect it. We collect other pieces of data as well including species which can be determined by the crawl pattern.An existing nest on the beach has received fresh wash over and sand has accreted therefore the original stakes are not effective for protecting the nest.Viola, thanks to a new set of stakes and survey/caution tape, the area is successfully protected again. Thank you volunteers!
The day our surveyors and volunteers have been waiting for has come….May 1st….the start of our 2024 sea turtle nesting season here in Panama City Beach!
Our surveyors headed out this morning just before sunrise as they will do daily between now and mid September looking for signs of sea turtle nests.
As we anxiously await finding our first nest of the season, we thought it would be fun to have our followers predict the details of our first nest of the 2024 Season.
Use this form to submit your PCB TW first nest of 2024 Prediction! The winner will be selected from form submissions and will receive their choice of a PCB Turtle Watch merchandise item!
Stay tuned here or on Facebook for updates throughout the season🐢
Morning surveyors begin 2024 Sea Turtle Nesting patrol
