New Threat to Marco Sea Turtles

Attachments

Sea Turtle Activity Update July 11.docx.pdf

With 23.7 miles of beach in Collier County, sea turtle monitors have recorded close to 2,000 loggerhead sea turtle nests so far. The first hatchlings emerged in Marco during the weekend of July 4th and they disoriented – which means that they followed the lights from the condos in the South Beach area. Luckily, sea turtle monitors were able to collect most of them. 

Also, on July 4th, sea turtle monitors found Nest Number Nine on Sand Dollar Island with signs of a coyote digging up sea turtle eggs. According to Tyler Beck, a sea turtle monitor for the past five years, he’s never encountered coyote predation and asked, “What’s driving them towards Sand Dollar Island?” Monitors found paw prints that pointed to a coyote, and bloody eggshells were scattered around the nest.

That same week, sea turtle monitors started protecting new sea turtle nests on Sand Dollar Island and Hideaway with metal cages. I reached out to Maura Kraus, Principal Environmental Specialist for Collier County, and she confirmed that “they have started caging on Sand Dollar Island and taking measures to get rid of the coyote pack, but it has been difficult.”

If you’ve ever visited Keewaydin Island and the Ten Thousand Islands during sea turtle nesting season, all the sea turtle nests are protected with metal cages to prevent raccoons, coyotes and feral boars from digging up the eggs and hatchlings. Using metal cages is something new in Marco Island, and for now, these predators seem to be staying within Sand Dollar Island. Metal cages are also installed around nests that have been attacked.

The week of July 16th was a very bad week for sea turtles according to monitor Tyler Beck. They’ve lost one to four nests a night and on the morning of Friday, July 16th, Nest Number 16 was attacked by coyotes as they hatched. Then, lights from the South Seas Towers caused some of the surviving hatchlings to disorient and monitors were collecting both live and dead hatchlings from the dunes. When it couldn’t get any worse, a dead mother loggerhead washed on Hideaway, struck by a boat, making it the fourth dead sea turtle this season (three died during the dredging period).

So, what’s causing this newer threat to the sea turtle nests this season? It is night after night and coyotes are looking for food and eating sea turtle eggs. FWC and USDA are aware of the issue and “they’ve tried four times to trap them at night and they will keep trying even after nesting season.”

Last week, the number of False Crawls for Marco was a high of 389 (last year was 190). People are asking, “What’s causing the high rate of False Crawls.” Female loggerheads coming ashore to nest on Sand Dollar Island found a much-altered habitat. Their nesting ritual was also disrupted by the presence of a dredging project during the month of May. On South Beach, a berm project was underway for the first two weeks of June. In addition, Hurricane Ian took down some of the vegetation allowing more artificial light from beach structures.