Bobbi Streeter was on her regular Tuesday morning patrol for Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring when she saw the tiny tracks of a single hatchling.
A single track is unusual, because typically hatchlings emerge from a nest in groups of about 100.
Streeter, a six-year veteran with AMITW, thought something seemed wrong, and she called section coordinators Lee and Marvin Zerkel to Coquina Beach.
The Zerkels excavated the nest that morning and found 28 hatchlings inside, as well as shells of unhatched eggs and broken shells. A hard-pounding rain had essentially cemented the hatchlings in their nest.
“I was worried they would drown,” AMITW executive director Suzi Fox said, adding that hatchlings can become trapped inside a waterlogged nest.
Later on Aug. 30, at about sunset, AMITW released the hatchlings to the Gulf of Mexico. A solitary hatchling rescued from a nest in Holmes Beach also caught its first wave.
The event, noticed to AMITW’s Facebook fans and well promoted by word of mouth, drew about 200 people to the beach at 10th Street South.
“It’s a magical thing,” said Christine Taylor of Chicago. “It’s beautiful to see them crawl out to the Gulf. I had no idea.”
“I’ve lived here for 25 years and never seen this,” said Bradenton resident Jen Lannon. “I’m in awe.”
For about an hour before the release, AMITW volunteers talked with people about the life of a loggerhead, the threats to loggerheads and nesting season on the Island, which lasts from about May 1 through Oct. 31.
Fox praised the volunteers, who are beginning the last two months of the season.
“I’m pretty proud of them,” she said. “And the community is pretty proud of them.”