The Turtle Spot

10/03/2023

03/15/2020

Lights out!!!

‪🚨They’re here! We recorded the first sea turtle nest of the 2020 season on the (Brevard Co. portion)!🚨‬

‪Sea turtles have been doing their thing for >100 million years. A little normalcy in a scary world. ‬

‪Here we go!

Stay healthy, everyone.

‪📸 Frank Solis‬

02/07/2020

We have whales and turtles!

08/10/2019

Go turtles!

Almost 25,000 sea turtle nests have been counted in the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge so far this season. Green turtle nesting ahead of the 2017 count on this date by 2800 nests. So a record could be set this year for Greens. Loggerhead nesting is still going strong with 744 nests in this reporting period.

Chris Long of UCF reports:
"On August 1st, we had our best day of green turtle nesting EVER! On just that day, we counted 383 green turtle nests! The next closest day was August 21st, 2017, which had 366 nests on another turtle-filled morning.

To put these numbers and the amazing green turtle recovery in perspective, think about this for a second: those 383 nests were more than any YEAR from 1982-1989. Amazing! Don't ever let anyone tell you the Endangered Species Act isn't important!"

Thanks again to everyone who is involved in monitoring the turtles and providing this data.

08/10/2019

Happy ! Today we are going to talk about the Blue Land Crab (Cardisoma guanhumi). Although they usually hang out in their burrows, you may have seen these critters crossing A1A recently. That's because we are in the middle of their spawning season! Males will leave their burrows to reproduce with the females, and then the females will carry the eggs externally for two weeks. The eggs will hatch and the larvae will be released into saltwater in order for them to survive, this is what makes the females migrate across A1A and on to the beach! Males are usually blue (pictured), while females can be light gray or white.

Photo: Victoria Escandell

07/16/2019

Oh my.... lots of turtles!

The nest counts continue to increase rapidly in the Carr Refuge. 1473 Green nests were counted during the past week in comparison ro 875 Loggerhead nests.

Katrina Phillips of the UCF MTRG reported that "The greens are keeping steady with over 200 nests per day in the (UCF portion of the) Refuge for the past few days, they may end up passing the loggerhead total soon. Time will tell if they will pass the 2017 recored of 15,830!" (Note: in the UCF portion of the Refuge from the Sebastian Inlet State Park boundary north).

The Green turtle photo was taken yesterday at sunrise in the Refuge.

Thanks again to all of the nest monitors who collect and share the data.

07/08/2019

Check out those numbers!!!

I, Vince Lamb, accept responsibility for the late nest count numbers this week. I thought I would be able to find enough Internet access in the Galapagos Islands to receive the numbers and post the counts, but it didn’t happen. I usually get the weekly counts on Sunday (EAI on Friday), so I should be able to post the current week data tomorrow.

Katrina Phillips of UCF reports: “Green turtles are laying more nests per week at this point than loggerheads, with over 800 loggerhead nests in the last week and over 1000 green nests. We might be near the peak of loggerhead nesting, but the greens are just getting going!”

Loggerhead nest counts are up by almost 800 compared to this date last year (8378 vs. 7605). Green nest counts far exceeded the count on this date of last year (151) and far exceeded 2017 at this date (1347). In 2017, the final Green Turtle nest count exceeded 17,000, a record year for the Carr Refuge.

Big thanks to the staff and volunteers of the UCF Marine Turtle Research Group, Sebastian Inlet State Park and Ecological Associates, Inc. for collecting and sharing this data.