This is the best turtle nesting season on record for Southwest Florida...
In a world of bad news, this is great to hear...
Southwest Florida - Bonita Beach, Vanderbilt Beach, Naples, Marco and Keewaydin Islands - is currently experiencing its best turtle nesting season on record. Conservationists are astonished and ecstatic.
Although most of the nests are from loggerhead turtles, there are also big surprises:
Bonita Beach shattered its record with 282 nests. The previous record was 238 in 2019.
Collier County now has 1,945 nests, breaking the 2016 record of 1,927.
Keewaydin Island had a whopping 609 nests.
Marco Island broke its record with its 101 nests… It also got its first green turtle nests ever.
The beach at Parkshore is also breaking records. It got a leatherback this year. That’s the first leatherback that has ever nested on mainland Collier County.
What makes this even better is the nests are successfully hatching, sending up to 150 hatchlings per nest scurrying to the Gulf.
Turtle nesting season runs from May 1 to October 31 and while the number of nests being laid is now slowing down, the number of nests hatching is starting to peak. Loggerhead hatchlings emerge from the nests about 60 days after the mother turtle lays the eggs.
The success is due to better conservation, say scientists… [Marco News]
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Great news ! I'm a trophy hunter and one of these loggerheads would make a fine gaming table in my man cave . Just flip em over , cut of the roundy part , and voila ! Backgammon table extraordinaire !!
All the scientists and people around helps those baby turtles get to the ocean before the birds can eat them. Good job!