As sea turtle nesting season reaches its final months, Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch & Shorebird Monitoring and the community that supports it are seeing the culmination of their efforts.
Despite Tropical Storm Debby flooding the beaches in early August, it’s still a big year in terms of nest numbers.
“I’m hoping we can at least beat last year’s number for hatchlings pro- duced,” Kristen Mazzarella, executive director of AMITW, said in an interview with The Islander Sept. 12.
In 2023, the total number of hatchlings was 22,287, while this year the tally sat at 20,478 on Sept. 13.
Some of the hatchlings emerged from nests spon- sored through AMITW’s Suzi L. Fox Adopt-a-Nest Program.
For a donation of $149, participants can have a person’s name or organization title placed on a wooden plaque at a sea turtle nest.
At the end of the season, after the nest has hatched, the plaque is delivered or mailed to sponsors.
“I think it was a really successful year,” Mazzarella said about the program in 2024. “We had a lot of new donors.”
One of her favorite participants is Manatee High
School, which helped AMITW make the plaques.
AMITW commissions 250-300 plaques a year from volunteers and outside organizations, and Mana- tee High School has been a partner in the past.
“Their shop class and their marine biology class worked on making the plaques.” Mazzarella said. “The shop class cut them out, and the other class painted them with the sealant.”
The money that AMITW earns from the plaques is almost always used for outreach programs at schools or events.
“We’re working right now on trying to establish some programs that we’re going to be able to take to schools,” Mazzarella said.
The money also goes into educational materials that AMITW hands out to properties and people on the beach early in nesting season.
“We’re trying to develop new things and handy ways of educating people,” Mazzarella said.
For 2025, AMITW has unveiled a new tier for the adoption program. At $199, donors will be able to choose where and when a plaque is placed.
For more about the program, go to AMITW’s web- site at islandturtlewatch.com.
Meanwhile, Mazzarella sees nesting activity going into October.
“We are probably going to be down to six or seven nests by the time October rolls around,” she said.
As of Sept. 13, they had 44 nests left on the beach.
Here’s hoping more “adoptees” will be celebrat- ing the success of their hatched nests in the coming weeks.
State tallying turtle numbers
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Com- mission in early September released sea turtle nesting numbers, comparing the 2024 season thus far to 2023 and 2022.
A look at statewide numbers as of Aug. 31, with two months of nesting to go:
- 109,929 loggerhead nests compared to 133,958 in 2023 and 116,503 in 2022;
- 12,928 green turtle nests compared to 74,823 in 2023 and 36,488 in 2022;
- 1,795 leatherback nests compared to 1,711 in
2023 and 1,825 in 2022;
- 24 confirmed Kemp’s ridley nests compared to 10 in 2023 and eight in 2022.
The FWC, in its report, stated, “We are happy to share that 2024 is shaping up to be a record-breaking year for Kemp’s ridley nests in Florida and for leatherback nesting on the Florida Gulf Coast.”
Additionally, while loggerheads and leatherbacks are having a good season, green turtle nest numbers remain low.
“These low numbers from green turtles are not surprising nor concerning to our team at this time, especially following the green turtles’ record-breaking numbers in 2023,” the FWC stated.
— Lisa Neff