Typical Day for Rookery Bay Sea Turtle Patrol

Attachments

Sea Turtle Activity Update August 9.docx.pdf

If you are part of the Rookery Bay Reserve’s Sea Turtle Patrol team for the Cape Romano Complex, you wake up early and take the boat out to survey six islands daily. According to Kayla Rosado and Camille Kynoch, 2022 Sea Turtle Interns, they make their way to Morgan Beach, Morgan Island and hop over to New Beach and then move on to Blind Pass and on to Kice Island and Dickman’s Point – five days a week during the nesting season.

They look for nests and false crawls. A false crawl is when a sea turtle comes up to a beach and for some reason, perhaps she encounters debris or too many shells in the sand, she makes a U-turn back to the water shown by her tracks on the sand.

They are trained to know which species crawled to the beach to nest by observing the tracks on the sand. According to Kayla, both Loggerhead and Green Sea Turtles leave distinct trail marks. Loggerheads pull themselves through the sand with alternating flipper motion.

According to Camille Loggerheads get their name by their big head. They weigh from 300 to 350 pounds with a life expectancy of 70 years. A mature loggerhead will nest three to five times in a season and will come back every two weeks to nest with a typical clutch of 80 to 100 eggs.

Green sea turtles will pull up to the beach using both flippers at the same time and their tracks line up in pairs. They get their Green name because it consumes so much sea grass that if you were to open a Green sea turtle, the inside is all green.

A ‘Greenie” has an average lifespan of 70 years, weighs from 350 to 400 pounds (larger than a loggerhead) and will lay a clutch of about 100 to 120 eggs every two weeks.

Sea turtles are sexually mature at 30 years and will return to nest on the beach they were born. The returning sea turtles this year were born around 1992 and the new hatchlings won’t be back till 2052.

On Cape Romano, Kayla and Camille will install wire cages to protect the nest from predators such as raccoons. On Cape Romano, due to warmer temperature, the incubation time in 2022 has been 58 days.

Mid-Season Stats at Cape Romano: 178 False Crawls, 104 nests and 133 hatchlings rescued from the nest. Total hatchlings: 2,812.

Year of the Green:  According to Kayla, it was 2020 when a Green Sea turtle last nested on Cape Romano. They come back every two years and this year a Greenie successfully nested five times.

On their first week out by themselves, Kayla and Camille encountered unusual tracks of a loggerhead on Blind Pass. The tracks looked like she was punching the ground indicating a three flipper sea turtle – and she successfully nested twice.

Sea Turtle intern Camille Kynoch graduated from Florida State University with a double major in biology and Environmental Science and had worked with FSU’s Marine Turtle Research Ecology and Conservation Group.  

Kayla Rosado earned a Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology and Environmental Policy at Monmouth University and in the fall of 2022, earned a Master of Science in Coastal Marine and Wetland Studies. Kayla also played Division I softball for Monmouth and Coastal Carolina University.

On Thursday, August 11th, both interns presented a mid-season sea turtle update to guests and donors of Friends of Rookery Bay’s Adopt A Sea Turtle Program. Thanks to people’s generosity in 2021, a record 78 nests were adopted and 171 nests were identified and protected against predation, resulting in 8,105 emerged hatchlings! For 2022, 103 sea turtle nests have been adopted.

Making a Difference: Sue Miller of Marco has been a sea turtle volunteer for nine years and has seen firsthand the amazing work they do. She has been a strong supporter of the Adopt A Sea Turtle Nest Program. She shared that “the interns have been so caring, mature and joyful, she couldn’t help but support the program, which funds the summer internships and hopes these young interns will continue to be significant stewards of our earth.