If success is measured in numbers, the beaches of Anna Maria Island are enjoying a wildly successful nesting season.
The chief statistician for sea turtles on Anna Maria Island, Pete Gross, announced this week that this years’ nesting activity has topped all others in his database.
His nest count as of July 31 was 380 — “and they are still nesting,” he reported by email with his data summary. The previous record number of nests was 369 in 2013.
“We’ve seen just about everything there is to see” on the beach, said Marv Zerkel, Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring volunteer and sections 8 and 9 coordinator.
Marv and wife, Lee Zerkel, have been AMITW volunteers for 20 years.
They are assigned to walk and coordinate sections 8 and 9, which together extend from Cortez Road south to the Longboat Pass Bridge.
As section coordinators, they schedule volunteers for daily beach walks looking for nesting activity and tracks left by nesting female sea turtles or hatchlings.
The turtles nesting on Anna Maria Island’s shore are almost all loggerheads, a protected species. They nest on the beach, mostly at night, leaving approximately 100 eggs that will incubate 45-70 days.
By July 24, section 9 had 74 nests, 128 false crawls and 2 hatched nests — a record-breaking number of sea turtle nests for mid-season on this part of the island, according to AMITW executive director Suzi Fox.
“Most of the nests in section 9 were discovered in June, so they should start hatching very soon,” Lee Zerkel said.
“The first hatch of the season in section 9 was initially marked as a false crawl,” Lee Zerkel said. “We followed cat prints that led us to the nest and found turtle tracks leading away from the nest to the water.”
“When we followed the tracks to the nest, we found 13 hatchlings upon excavation and released them to the Gulf that evening,” said Marv Zerkel. “We then changed the designation from a false crawl to the 60th nest of the season in section 9.”
Unlike the other sections on the island, all the nests in section 9 are covered with screens to protect the eggs from predators. “Raccoons are a very big problem on this part of the island,” said Marv Zerkel. “If we didn’t put screens over the nests, the raccoons would eat or destroy the eggs.”
On July 25, the Zerkels and volunteers Janet Pierson and Amy Waterbury, excavated the nest that was discovered May 18 at the edge of the dunes near Longboat Pass.
“The nest has had a 70-day incubation period. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, we can go in and excavate after this time period if the nest has not yet hatched on its own,” said Lee Zerkel. “Additionally, we could see that a ghost crab had decided to make the nest its home, and that can be a problem because the crab could destroy the eggs in the clutch.”
Upon excavation, the nest produced 78 hatched eggs and one “pipped” hatchling, one that had tried to emerge from its shell, but died.
“This work is never textbook,” said Marv Zerkel. “Even after 20 years, there’s always something different to see.”
For more information about AMITW, contact Suzi Fox at suzilfox@gmail.com or 941-778-5638.