Friday’s turtle tracking was eventful, but not entirely positive. The good news is that we added two new nests in our area giving us a total of 12 active nests and bringing the total for Bonita Beach to 34.
It’s interesting to note that one of the momma turtles chose to lay her nest right in the middle of a beach access walkway behind the SeaScape condominium. As you can see in the picture below the entire walkway, which is normally roped off to designate it as a beach walkway, is now taped off with our yellow turtle nest tape.
Nest # 34 - In the middle of a beach access walk way
We all appreciate the residents of the SeaScape being willing to use other methods to get from their homes to the beach.
We also had the opportunity to walk a different section of the beach on Friday and got a shot of another interesting nesting location in zone 1, in front of Doc’s Beach House. This particular momma turtle chose to nest between rental wave runners. I’m not sure how she squeezed in there but when they decide on a location they seem to be extremely persistent.
Nesting between wave runners
The “not so good” news of the week is that one of the nests, a nest that was about a week away from hatching, was infiltrated by what appears to have been a raccoon. The raccoon was able to pull a few of the eggs from the nest but the vast majority remained in the nest and survived. The nest was repaired by our permit holder and we have every reason to believe the remaining babies will successfully hatch, on schedule, in the next week or so.
Raccoon Tracks on the nest
Amazingly three extremely small baby turtles were removed from their eggs but were feisty enough to have survived the raccoon. The three baby turtles will be cared for and released around the time the remainder of the nest hatches.
In the ongoing saga of the FGCU red drift algae study one more sample is gone so it would appear that the study involves removing one sample each week so that it can be studied and compared to the sample(s) taken during previous weeks. If anyone from FGCU can provide us with the results of the study we’d be anxious to share the results here.
FGCU Study - Two Samples Remaining
We hope to be able to report at least one nest hatching next week. Thanks for reading.
