Foamy waves pummeled the beach and sloshed over sea turtle nests as Tropical Storm Cristobal passed by in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this month. Now turtle experts have surveyed the damage and say while nests did wash away, many others that were underwater might survive.
“Nest loss was pretty minimal on most beaches,” said Mary Toro, environmental specialist with Collier County Parks and Recreation who helps monitor sea turtles in Collier County. “We did get a lot of inundation and accretion (of sand on top of nests), but whether or not those nests will hatch will depend on how long the water sat on the nests.
"Luckily the storm is early for the season so we still have a few months of nesting left. Hopefully we will stay storm-free,” she said.
Turtle nesting season officially runs May 1 to October 31.
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Dave Addison, a retired biologist who has monitored sea turtles for decades with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, said a huge number of nests on Keewaydin Island were overrun by water.
“We have 170 nests on the entire island, of those 105 got affected by high water,” Addison began. “They got hit pretty good from this Cristobal. Don’t know how many were totally washed away or flooded. You just got to wait and see what happens.
"If they were laid recently they are better able to withstand it than ones that are seven to 10 days away from hatching. They need less oxygen if they are laid recently. We will see ultimately what the impacts are.”
Beaches with greater slopes give nests a better chance for survival. The slope lets the water drain faster.
That’s why Eve Haverfield, president and founder of Turtle Time, a nonprofit organization that monitors sea turtles in South Lee County, said Bonita Beach did much better than Fort Myers Beach.
“None of them were washed away on Bonita,” Haverfield said. “Half were washed over, but they are at a slant so they drain very well. On Fort Myers Beach we lost at least five. Five were washed away completely. People were finding eggs on the beach. Some of them were in the dune system and the dunes are gone. The eggs are gone, everything is gone.
"Fort Myers beach is very flat, and unfortunately they continue raking practices that are not good for the health of the beach. The areas that are raked every day are lower than the rest of the beach. There were nests underwater for days on end. The nests in standing water suffocate or drown.”
Haverfield and her volunteers reburied the eggs that they found on the beach. She does not know their chances for survival. She said nests that had water on them for a short time should survive, but those under standing water are at a greater risk.
“A tidal washover is not necessarily lethal,” Haverfield said. “As long as they are not submerged for an extended period of time. I don’t know how long extended is.”
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Sanibel and Captiva islands lost 29 nests in the storm, said Kelly Sloan, sea turtle program coordinator with the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation.
Sloan said she does not know how many of the nests washed over will be lost.
“We have seen nests washed over and the nests still are successful,” she said. “Sometimes they hatch and sometimes they don’t.”
Turtle nests take about 60 days to hatch. If a nest has not hatched in 70 days turtle monitors are allowed to dig up the nest to document what happened. Turtle experts won’t know what nests were lost until 70 days after each nest was laid and, if unhatched, can be dug.
Even with the storm, turtle experts believe this will be a good season.
Collier County had 805 nests as of Monday. There were 925 the same time last year. Bonita Springs had 78 as of Monday and 81 on the same day last year.
It’s Fort Myers Beach that is showing the most improvement with 74 nests already laid in 2020 compared to only 26 by the same time in 2019.
“It’s stunning,” Haverfield said. “That’s 30 years of conservation.”
Things are also looking good on Sanibel and Captiva. There are 145 nests on Captiva in 2020 compared to 78 on the same date in 2019. The western end of Sanibel has 78 this year compared to 75 last year, while the eastern end has 225 this year and had 241 the same time last year.
“We are having a really good year,” Sloan said. “It started off really strong.”
Sloan said best of all there is a leatherback turtle that is also nesting. Most turtle nests are from loggerhead turtles.
There are now six documented leatherback nests that are believed to be all from the same turtle.
“That is so exciting,” she said.
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