Sea Turtles - Statistics from Previous Years

Previous Nesting Seasons

Every turtle season is cause for excitement. With it comes anticipation of what the season might bring and the opportunity to give something back to the Earth. The opening days provide a fertile field for speculation. The turtles may bring a record-breaking season or a more usual one.

2010

2010 was the third worst year for the islands in terms of number of nests laid.

2009

2009 was an okay season for the islands, with a total of 15,236 hatchlings.  The rest of Florida did not far well:  2009 proved to be the 4th lowest year for a loggerhead nesting season on record.  On the bright side, it was the highest year on record in Florida for leatherback nesting.  Sanibel had its first ever leatherback nest (click here to read more).  The only other  leatherback nest ever recorded in Southwest Florida was in Sarasota.

2008

The 2008 sea turtle season had a welcomed increase in sea turtle nesting on both Sanibel and Captiva Islands after a decade of declining nest numbers. Sanibel had 279 loggerhead and three green sea turtle nests. This is a 59% increase in loggerhead nesting from 2007. Captiva had 137 loggerhead nests this year; a 154% increase from 2007. In all, those 419 nests produced 21,942 hatchlings. This was despite high tides associated with Tropical Storms Fay and Gustav, and Hurricane Ike which resulted in many nests being washed out or overwhelmed by sand. Oddly enough, the only storm to come close to the islands, Tropical Storm Fay, had the least impact on sea turtle nests. It is too soon to know if this is the start of an increase in loggerhead nesting after a decade of declines, or if this is simply a lucky year amidst the overall decline of the species.

Statistics by individual nest for 2008:
Sanibel East End
Sanibel from Tarpon Bay Road to Bowman's Beach
Sanibel from Bowman's Beach to Blind Pass
Captiva

2007

The nesting numbers overall on Sanibel and Captiva continued the decline of recent years. Sanibel was up a bit from last year, by 12% in the west end and nearly double on the east end. Captiva, however, was down 35%. All areas of the islands were hit with periods of unusually high tides due to Tropical storm Barry in June and Hurricane Dean in August, which covered or washed out a number of nests.

Sanibel’s west end beaches were selected as part of a genetics-sampling project being undertaken by a student at the University of Georgia. The project goal is to determine what are the similarities and differences in the genetic stocks of loggerheads nesting in many different areas. While conducting the post-hatch dig, permittees collected either a flipper from a dead hatchling or an eggshell; samples were placed in a vial of ethanol and labeled with date, nest number and position.
2006

Turtle season finished with a total of 216 nests on Sanibel and Captiva, only a few nests more than the 2005 season. This is a decline of approximately 50 % since 1992, when the Conservation Foundation took over the sea turtle monitoring program from Caretta Research. The most productive year was 1995, with more than 534 nests recorded.

2005

The 2005 season followed the recent downward trend in the number of nests, totaling about 50 fewer than in 2004. The high tides and winds from Hurricane Dennis completely washed out more than 40 nests and dumped sand over others, from a few inches to three feet deep. The additional sand cuts off the oxygen to the eggs and may make it difficult for hatchlings to emerge even if they do hatch. Repeated wash-overs by high tides have produced nests with larger numbers of unhatched eggs and with more hatchlings found dead in the nests. On this coast, usually 80 percent of eggs laid hatch; by September, however, the percentage was one-half of that.

2004

The 2004 sea turtle season came in slowly and started out well but the monitoring program ended for the season on Aug. 13 with the arrival of Hurricane Charley.

False crawls on the west end were almost double the number of nests. Captiva had the lowest number of false crawls, with one fewer than the number of nests.

Driving the west end a week after Charley was an awesome experience. The beaches from Tarpon Bay to Bowman's Beach were beautifully flat with an extra helping of lovely white Gulf sand. One nest in the Gulf Shores/Gulf Pines area had two stakes left standing with about four feet of sand covering the original nest level. With the extra sand washed in, not a single nest stake was found anywhere else. Those nests in the mid-beach area were totally washed out; those higher up the beach were covered with four to six feet of sand.

Because identification markers were swept away, we lost track of approximately 90 nests on the west end, about 31 on the east end, and an estimated 32 on Captiva.

In addition to a much larger number of false crawls than normal, attributed to very dry sand in the early summer, there were no nests or eggs destroyed by raccoons, while the 2003 season had more than 40 nests partially or completely destroyed by them.

In the final beach run, a week after Charley, there was one turtle nest laid the previous night: a large, perfect, almost textbook-case nest in the middle of the tracks of multiple vehicles patrolling the beaches. Turtle life goes on as it has for millions of years, with or without our help.

2003

In 2003, weather came in with a bang on June 26 with several consecutive days of high tides that covered nests. This probably accounted to some degree for the greater number of nests with higher percentages of unhatched eggs. The next period of high tides and nests under water came late in the season, September 6, and washed out 10 nests.

Every year, raccoons feast on turtle eggs and this year, despite screens over the nests, they enjoyed more than in previous years. Ghost crabs, which usually prey on hatchlings, were responsible for taking a small number. Fire ants prey on nests, either before or after the hatchlings leave them. Fortunately, these three predators together usually affect only a small percentage of eggs and hatchlings.

Sanibel and Captiva's 2003 total is 322 - more than in 2001 or 2002 but less than nest numbers in 1999 and 2000. The general trend for sea turtle nests is downward and the East Coast records its 2003 nests as the fewest in history.

2002

Nests for the 2002 Sanibel-Captiva turtle season fell to 279, the first time the number has dropped below 300 since 1995. Extremely high tides over several days in both June and July resulted in more nests than usual that did not hatch at all. Very few nests were totally washed away, but more were covered over with sand to the extent that hatchlings could not find their way out. In nests that did produce hatchlings, there were larger numbers of unhatched eggs.