With a month to go in sea turtle nesting season along Florida'scoastlines, observers are feeling pretty optimistic.
Nesting numbers are up at key beaches around the state that are used for tracking overall trends, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. That includes all three major species in Florida: loggerheads, greens and leatherbacks.
Loggerhead and green turtle nesting also increased locally this year, showing big improvements after dramatic declines in nesting last year.
Officials and advocates say they hope the increases mean some of the efforts to bring back the endangered and threatened turtles are working.
The results have been especially surprising for observers because nesting season got off to a slow start and they weren't optimistic, said Blair Witherington, a research scientist with the commission who is based in Brevard County.
"In years past, we've noticed cold water often puts a damper on sea turtle nesting," Witherington said. The water offshore early this season was "very cold," making it look like this could be a "very poor nesting season."
"Then the water warmed up and the sea turtle nesting season really warmed up," he said.
At beaches all along the local coastline, observers have been surprised and delighted by the number of turtle nests. At Canaveral National Seashore, with 12 miles in Volusia and 12 in Brevard County, it has been a "great" season, said John Stiner, resource management specialist. Observers counted 5,583 total nests over the 24 miles.
"We're quite a ways over what we've had before," Stiner said, more than 1,000 nests over the previous record high in 2000.
Elsewhere along local beaches it "looks like a very good year," said Beth Libert, president of the Volusia/Flagler Turtle Patrol, which monitors nests in Flagler County and north of Ponce Inlet in Volusia.
Keeping close watch over sea turtles can be an emotional roller coaster, with nest numbers fluctuating wildly from year to year, and hatchlings falling victim to any number of catastrophes. A rare Kemp's Ridley nest in Volusia this year caused great excitement, but the eggs never hatched. An evaluation showed the eggs were infertile.
Observers have been particularly concerned about loggerhead nests, which suffered a declining trend in the past decade after a climb in the 1990s. A jump in loggerhead nest numbers in 2008 had officials hoping things were turning around, but nest numbers dropped again last year, with just a little more than half the nests of the previous year.
This year, the loggerhead nests bounced back almost to their 2008 level, with 2,155 nests counted along the Volusia coastline. In 2008, there were 2,239.
"It has been very encouraging," Stiner said.
While a bit of celebration may be in order for a singularly good year, Witherington said one great season doesn't reverse the decline seen in loggerhead nesting during the past 10 years.
Experts are never really certain why the numbers rise some years and drop in others. A rise in one season may simply reflect the number of turtles that decided to migrate to nest, he said. The biggest influence on any given season isn't the overall turtle population, but the number of turtles that nest.
"Every year we're just seeing part of the population nesting," Witherington said. More nests over three or four years would mean an increase in turtle numbers.
Perhaps many of the conservation measures taken in the past couple of decades are having a positive impact, he said.
One of the "most important milestones" was a rule that took effect just after the turn of the century, requiring the openings on turtle excluder devices on fishing nets to be large enough to exclude adult loggerheads, he said. "That benefited nesting sea turtles a great deal."
It has also been a big year for green turtles, Witherington said, with nests still appearing almost daily.
Libert said two green turtle nests were found on Flagler beaches Thursday morning. Witherington was surprised to hear about the number of green turtle nests at Canaveral.
The seashore reports a total of 1,314 green turtle nests so far, with 409 of those in Volusia. "That's just absolutely unheard of," Witherington said.
"Green turtles are a unique success story," he said. "Back in the late '80s in Volusia County, there were probably just a handful of sea turtle nests during a season."
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