Turtle Watching

This summer I have had the pleasure of being a Turtle Volunteer. We live on St. George Island; a barrier island off the coast of Apalachicola. The island is a nesting place for several kinds of sea turtles. When sea turtles are ready to lay eggs they return to their own birthplace.

In May, we start checking the beach each morning at sunrise for turtle tracks. The tracks often lead to a distrubed area of sand. Volunteers dig in the sand to see if there are eggs. If we find eggs we put the sand back and mark the area to keep beachgoers from distrubing the nest. After about 55 days the eggs hatch and lots of baby turtles make their way to the ocean.

This was my first summer to be a volunteer. It was very interesting and educational. I found several nests, but this summer's hurricanes washed several of them away.

A couple of weeks ago, one of "my" nests hatched! The baby turtles leave the nest in the middle of the night so I didn't get to see them. But a few days after the nest has hatched we evaluated it. We found 106 hatched eggs and 10 eggs that did not mature. We only found one dead baby turtle, so hopefully 105 little turtles made it to the water.

If you vacation on a gulf beach you can help the turtles. Please do not leave chairs, towels, sand toys, etc. on the beach over night. The turtles can get caught in them and may not be able to get back to the water. If you dig holes on the beach, fill them in before you leave so turtles won't fall into them. And keep beach front lights off at night, the mother turtles and the baby turtles get disoriented by the light and may crawl toward the light instead of the water.