Clearwater Marine Aquarium reports record-breaking sea turtle nesting season

Record-breaking sea turtle nesting season

Just before sunrise from April through October, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium’s sea turtle nesting team documents sea turtle activity on Pinellas County’s beaches. Kailey Tracy reports.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Just before sunrise from April through October, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium’s sea turtle nesting team documents sea turtle activity on Pinellas County’s beaches.

If there’s a nest, they mark off the area and monitor it every single day until it hatches.

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"While we're monitoring, we're looking for things such as any sort of wash over, whether the water has washed over the nest or sitting on top of the nest," Carly Oakley, the manager of CMA’s sea turtle nesting team, said.

"We also look for predations, which, we have a big coyote issue in this area that will go and dig up those nests. And another thing is just human interaction. Are there people inside digging in the nest that we don't want them to be? We then would go out and educate the public on that," she said.

Big picture view:

This year, there’s good news.

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"We did have a record-breaking season. We actually saw 405 nests and 613 false crawls," Oakley said. "A false crawl is simply a sea turtle comes up onto the beach, and she's essentially looking for the perfect place to lay her nest. So, as she's crawling up on the beach, she's kind of looking around, checking her surroundings, and for whatever reason she doesn't like that area, she'll turn around and go back into the water without laying her eggs. Now, they will do this multiple times until they find that perfect spot, or if they don't, then fortunately they will lay their eggs in the water," she said.

Dig deeper:

According to Oakley, the numbers are more than 100 over the average.

"Within the last 30 years of data that we do have, we have never seen this many activities in one season," she said.

The numbers are also up from 271 nests in 2024.

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"The hurricanes, unfortunately, it did take out a majority of our nests. So, we didn't have as successful of a year last year. Now, this year we had a much successful year. The majority of our nests did hatch. So, we are super excited about our conservation efforts, seemingly making a positive effect," Oakley said.

Oakley said they were expecting higher numbers this year due to trends, but not this high.

"It’s based off the sea turtle's life span, so every three years is when they nest. So, they'll nest, and they'll lay several nests in one season, and then they take a two-year hiatus and then come back again. So, there tends to be a three-year pattern as to all the turtles that are coming back each season," she said.

What they're saying:

"There are other places that were affected more negatively by the other hurricanes, which is causing the sea turtles to come here as a place to nest. So, we're very thankful that they came here and still laid nests," Oakley said.

She also said that although conservation efforts seem to be working, do your part to help sea turtles by leaving the beaches dark, clean and flat at night to help prevent sea turtles from getting disoriented.

They’re also federally protected, so it’s against the law to touch sea turtles, their nests or eggs.