Nests Are Hatching! Read about it in Turtle Trax by Melanie Waite
I have one thing to say: Turn off your lights! Close your blinds and curtains.
We are in the midst of turtle hatching along beaches. Lights cause disorientation and loss of baby turtles. (Hatchlings turn to the light of the moon to find their way to the water, unless they are disoriented by artificial lights. This wrong turn can result in death for the tiny hatchlings.)
FWC allows just two trained turtle monitors to check nests briefly every hour. We don’t know when a nest will hatch. Meaning which date it will hatch, but also what time.
Consider that usually hatching occurs at night, but can happen in the daytime, too. Those babies can’t see daylight under the sand. Hatch is usually triggered by a drop in temperature, when the sun goes down. But it can be caused by a rain shower.
Typically, a hatch is a group event. It is difficult for a single hatchling to dig itself out. When the top hatchlings reach the surface, they can’t stop. Siblings are pushing them up from below.
Turtle monitors have a general idea of when a nest will hatch. This summer the average incubation time is 59 days, but that will lengthen as temperatures drop.
We expect nests to hatch in the order in which they were laid. But that isn’t happening. At Pensacola Beach, Nests 1 and 5 were washed out early by high tides. Nest 3 was first to hatch, followed 4 days later by nest 2. Then came 6 and 7, and after 5 days, nest 9.
Nest 4 didn’t hatch, so was assessed after 70 days incubation. Seven live hatchlings were unearthed, along with 143 undeveloped eggs.
Those two night shift checkers may be going to three or four nests, over the length of Pensacola Beach. Tuesday, when the monitors got down to the westernmost nest, they discovered it had already hatched, and the babies were disoriented all over the place, at Park West, on the road, across the road. Street lights may have caused this.
That call for help went out about 9 p.m., and three more monitors responded to follow hatchling tracks and retrieve as many as they could. They counted 88 tracks leaving the nest and retrieved 31 babies.
Incidentally, that is the nest that Katie Turk wrote about in her turtle article, July 10 edition, after she and I located it.
A similar call went out at 7 a.m. August 21, when morning patrollers discovered that nest #7 had unexpectedly hatched, and the babies had been attracted to the lights from tall condos, causing them to go east and north into the dunes and the road.
Nest 6 hatchlings were also disoriented toward condo lights.
Hug a turtle person! We are all demoralized at the loss of so many hatchlings.
If you find any turtle, dead or alive, please call Escambia Marine Resources, 850-595-3460, or FWC Wildlife Hotline, 888-404-3922. While you await trained responders, monitor the turtle(s), maintain distance, no flash photography, only red lights.
All work is done under FWC permits MTP 25-032 and 25-202.
Nest Update as of 08/28/2025:
Pensacola Beach 24(-3)
P Key/ Esc. 16
P Key State Park 3
Navarre Beach 15
Gulf Islands 72
Navarre Beach 17