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Turtle trackers begin process of marking new nests
JASON EASTERLY / File photo
Turtle nests like this one near Residents Beach, are marked and posted when they are found. The nest will lie dormant for approximately two months before the eggs hatch.
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Dawn spreads across Bonita Beach. Sun rays burst through palm fronds, casting salmon and amber hues on a pile of crumbled sea shells near the tumbling surf.
A brown pelican soars over the Gulf of Mexico, pulls its wings close to its body and kamikaze dives on a school of baitfish.
Songbird-sized plovers scurry across the beach, running on skinny legs in and out of the frothy surf.
There’s a snowy egret feeding in the shallows a couple dozen yards from Angie Ralph, a volunteer with Turtle Time Inc., a nonprofit organization based on Fort Myers Beach that monitors local beaches for research and conservation purposes.
“Even from England, it was always appetizing,” Ralph said while peering over the turquoise waters as though a female sea turtle were about to emerge and nest in front of her.
Sea turtle nesting season runs from May 1 through the end of October in Southwest Florida.
“Turtle Time was started here, and it’s so popular that it was advertised even in England. So I knew before I got here that I wanted to join the group,” she said.
That was more than nine years ago.
She’s since seen marine turtles the size of tractor tires lumber up on the beach, dig giant holes, lay 100 or more eggs, bury them and then slink back to the Gulf of Mexico in a primitive ritual worthy of a National Geographic cover.
“One morning I got here and there was a very large female still laying eggs,” Ralph said, holding a Styrofoam coffee cup in one hand, a pack of Camel cigarettes and a blue lighter in the other. “It’s absolutely amazing to see these huge creatures come out of the water. They come up and lay their eggs and they’re off again.”
Like Ralph, many of the females nesting on Bonita Beach will have crossed the Atlantic Ocean to get here.
Unlike Ralph, though, those females were born here.
No matter how many thousands of miles they swim from Bonita Beach, females that hatched here will always return to this spot to deposit the next generation of loggerheads.
Dozens of volunteers comb Lee County beaches during turtle nesting season.
They look for turtle tracks, which look like a single tractor tire print, and signs of nesting.
They measure the width of the tracks to get an approximate size for the turtle. Then a GPS unit is used to mark the exact location of the nest. Wooden stakes are pounded into the sand and the area is marked off with yellow tape, kind of like a small crime scene.
No turtle nests have been found on Bonita Beach. Fort Myers Beach has one, and so does Captiva and Sanibel Island.
Eve Haverfield founded Turtle Time Inc. nearly 20 years ago and is one of the region’s top turtle experts.
She collects data from the Turtle Time volunteers and submits it to state and federal agencies to help gauge the sea turtle population and overall health.
Turtles have at least one navigational aid, Haverfield said, and maybe more.
“We do know that sea turtles are able to respond to the Earth’s magnetic fields,” she said. “They use the moon and the stars and possibly planetary alignment. They may even have a bio-chemical cue that allows them to smell scent traces on the beach.”
Regardless of how they find their way, sea turtles have nested on local beaches for thousands of years.
Their reproductive practices went relatively undisturbed until the past 100 years or so, when European settlers started changing the coast and the inland waterways that feed South Florida estuaries.
More recently, loggerhead nesting numbers have dropped dramatically in the last decade, Haverfield said.
Scientists can’t point to a single or even a handful of factors that have led to the declining numbers, although human activities like commercial fishing and shining urban lights toward nesting beaches could be part of the problem.
Hatchlings emerge about two inches in length and instinctively hurry toward any nearby light source. The same internal mechanism that sends tiny turtles toward the moon rays reflecting off the ocean’s surface misguide them toward lights on shore.
“We’re concerned about the numbers. The Florida (human) population really started booming 30 to 40 years ago, and the lighting issues were around then,” Haverfield said. “I remember reading about it when I was still living in Canada in the ‘80s. Thousands and thousands of little sea turtles were being smashed by cars on (highway) A1A” on Florida’s east coast.
Female loggerheads sexually mature between the ages of 20 and 50, and can live more than 80 years.
They’re found worldwide in tropical and subtropical climates and nest in the United States from the southern beaches of North Carolina south to Florida and along the Gulf Coast.
Florida is thought to have the largest loggerhead nesting population on the planet.
The Naples Daily News asked readers to help us build an interactive map of Mother's Day greetings from around Southwest Florida and you responded! The majority of our responses were from Collier County, but we received Mother's Day messages from all over the United States, including Louisiana, Arizona, Tennessee, Ohio, New Jersey, Georgia and Missouri, as well as locations on Florida's East Coast. 
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When I was a child, I saw a nest south of the pier that had been dug up by raccoons. There were dead and half eaten turtles everywhere. I was sad and looked in vain for any signs of life. After searching fruitlessly, I found one turtle which had gone the wrong way and was covered in fireants. I picked him up and blew the ants off. I then walked him down to the water and gave him a dip. I let him go and he paddled away. That was thirty years ago. I still think about that little turtle today. I wonder what they think having come here for not thousands of years but quite possibly hundreds of thousands. We are so full of ourselves and we are changing the planet so quickly I can only pray they survive. I saw a leatherback turtle from the pier once and it was so huge it took my breath away. I imagine these ancient giants looking for jellyfish as they have always done only to choke on the plastic garbage which litters our seas. If we can pass laws against speedos, surely we can do more to help these creatures continue through their greatest hurdle yet.
#1 Posted by BackRoadsWine on May 12, 2008 at 11:58 a.m. (Suggest removal)
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