Mother nature was hard on Sea Turtles this summer

            The Sea Turtles at Risk group has just released its final summary of the 2012 sea turtle nesting season on St. George Island and while the season was successful, the turtles still face problems from humans and predators.

There were 286 loggerhead sea turtle nests and 2 green sea turtle nests marked for protection on St. George Island this year.

That’s a record number of nests.

Of those, however, only about 64 hatched successfully sending about 4250 hatchlings to the Gulf of Mexico.

Both of the green sea turtle nests hatched successfully.

Mother Nature was not kind to the sea turtle nests this Summer.

211 nests were washed away by Tropical storms Debby and Isaac, as well as from high water caused by south winds and high tides,

Coyotes destroyed 6 more nests before they could be screened for monitoring.

Of the nests that hatched successfully, 5 had hatchlings that were disoriented by house lights.

On the positive side, people are showing a growing interest in how to protect the turtles.

Over 820 people turned out for one of the free sea turtle presentations offered at the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve during this year’s nesting season.

If you would like to get more information about local sea turtle populations and what you can do to protect them, visit the Sea Turtle at Risk website at seaturtlesatrisk.org.

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