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LOGGERHEAD SEA TURTLES

The Conservancy of Southwest Florida Science Department has been monitoring sea turtle nesting and hatchling recruitment on Keewaydin Island continuously since 1982. This program is now one of the longest running sea turtle monitoring/research projects in the nation. 


Since the program’s inception, we have documented over 284,000 hatchlings from Keewaydin Island reaching Gulf of Mexico waters for their chance at becoming adults.


What we do

Keewaydin Island

Our sea turtle team monitors Keewaydin Island for nesting sea turtles every night from May 15 to August 15. Each night, the team uses ATVs to scour the beach in order to find as many nesting turtles as possible.

After a turtle begins nesting, the sea turtle team will collect measurements of the animal’s carapace (top shell) and tag the turtle so it can be identified at a later date. This is done so a specific animal’s nesting history over the years can be recorded. The nesting records of some the Keewaydin turtles now span well over 20 years.

Our team will also record the locations of all the nests and install wire caging that prevents egg predation by raccoons, while still allowing the babies to crawl freely toward the water once they hatch.  

Team members record the fate and hatchling success of each nest through October. In order to do that, the team will conduct a routine nest excavation a few days after the nest hatches to count the number of hatched eggs versus the total number of eggs in the nest. The team takes that number and links it to the records from the adult that laid the nest.

We also record nest fate - whether it was predated, flooded by tides or washed away.

 

Sea turtle team performing a nest excavation of a loggerhead nest site

Nest excavation

Sea turtle intern holding two babies found during a nest excavation that hadn't made it out of the nest.

Intern holding baby loggerheads

Baby loggerheads found during nest excavation.

Baby loggerhead

Research Projects

Identifying Foraging Grounds of Loggerhead Turtles 

This project began in 2009 and was concluded in 2015. We deployed 42 satellite tags on sea turtles form Keewaydin Island. Some of these animals were tagged a second time to see if they returned to the same areas after each nesting cycle.

This is a cooperative study with the Marine Turtle Research Group at the University of Central Florida.

Click here if you would like to see where they went.

Satellite tagged loggerhead leaving Keewaydin Island.


Hatchling Sex Ratio Study

Entering its 13 year in 2016, this is a cooperative effort with staff from the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. The objective of this project is to determine the sex ratio of hatchlings it is influenced by rain, flooding and nest location.

We can do this because the sex of sea turtles is determined by nest incubation temperature during the middle third of the 55-day incubation period.

A higher nest temperature results in more females while lower temperature causes a shift toward males. Guests to the Nature Center an get an easy mnemonic device to remember this fact: "Hot chicks and cool dudes."

Putting a temperature logger in a nest.


Assessing Sea Turtle Nesting in the Cay Sal Bank, Bahamas 

Between 1995 and 2000 Conservancy staff worked with researchers from the University of Florida’s Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research in surveying the islands of the Cay Sal Bank for sea turtle nesting activity.

In 1999 and 2000, nine satellite tags were deployed on nesting loggerheads. The finding of the survey revealed that this islands support the largest known nesting aggregation of loggerhead turtles in the Bahamas Archipelago.  


Assisting Colleagues Sample Collection for Research Projects 

With our ability to interact with nesting loggerheads, we have been able to provide graduate students and facility at many universities with tissue samples for population studies and foraging area assessment with stable isotope analysis.

Some of these cooperative efforts have been on-going for a long as 10 years.

The universities involved include the University of Georgia, the University of Central Florida and the University of Florida. We have also provided a platform for graduate students at the University of Miami and Florida Atlantic University to conduct their MS research.

Collecting a tissue biopsy sample from a loggerhead.


Loggerhead sea turtle facts

Scientific name:
  Caretta caretta
Adult length:
  3 feet
Weight:
  250-300 pounds
Lifespan:
  Greater than 50 years
Habitat:
  Widely distributed throughout temperate and tropical regions of the ocean. Here in Florida, sea turtles use our patch reef ecosystems, just like you can see in our 5,000 gallon Patch Reef Aquarium, as foraging grounds.

Diet:
  Primarily carnivorous- eating fish, crustaceans, jellyfish, and occasionally seagrass and algae.

Protection status:
  Threatened in Florida, Endangered in other parts of the world.
Threats:
  As hatchlings, sea turtles face several natural predators, but as adults their only predators are sharks and humans. Human threats include habitat loss, poaching, pollution, litter (such as plastic bags), commercial fishing, and boat collisions.

How you can help:
  Clean up our beaches, use reusable bags instead of plastic bags, support fisheries that use turtle safe devices on their nets, and slow-down in designated channel zones.

Other cool facts:
  Loggerheads were named for their relatively large heads and powerful jaws. Females come onto our local beaches where they lay 100-120 eggs, and can come back to lay clutches multiple times in a nesting season! Nesting season for this species is from May – October.

 

 

 

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Conservancy of Southwest Florida

Address

1495 Smith Preserve Way
Naples, Florida 34102

Nature Center Hours

Monday - Saturday
9:30 am - 4:00 pm (ET)

Sunday: 12 pm - 4 pm

von Arx Wildlife Hospital Hours

239-262-2273
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365 days a year

 

Contact

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239-262-0672 fax

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