Leatherback Turtle Reported Visiting Nearby Beaches

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The Conservancy of SW Florida monitors the sea turtle nests on Keewaydin Island. According to Dr. Jeffrey Schmid, Environmental Research Manager at the Conservancy, “On April 23, the first crawl of the season left behind tracks that were NOT from a loggerhead sea turtle.”

Dr. Schmid wrote, “There was a noticeable tail drag down the center of the track characteristic of the relatively larger tails of green turtles. But Schmid added that the sheer size of the turtle track suggested that this was not a green turtle but that of the leviathan of sea turtles, the leatherback.”

Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation also recorded their first nest of the season was from a leatherback. The last time a leatherback nested on Sanibel was four years earlier.

According to Schmid, “The first leatherback recorded on Keewaydin was in 2015, and the most recent on Collier County beaches was in 2022. Given leatherbacks are such infrequent nesters, the false crawl on Keewaydin and the subsequent nest of Sanibel probably were the same female turtle looking to deposit her eggs on a favorable stretch of beach.”

Schmid added, “Leatherbacks return to nest every two to three years, so the recent two-year interval of nests on Southwest Florida beaches (2020, 2022, and 2024) may very well be the same female turtle. These collective observations demonstrate the interconnectivity of the various beaches along our coast.”

It’s a possibility that we may see Leatherback tracks on Marco beaches!

 

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