One Special Turtle

Even for turtle lovers, some turtle nests are more exciting than others.

“This is a very big deal,” Sharon Maxwell of South Walton Turtle Watch said of a nest of Kemp’s ridley turtles that hatched in July in Walton County.“In the years 1998-2006, there have only been 26 (Kemp’s ridley) nests in the state ... This is a very rare thing.”

By comparison, loggerhead turtles made an estimated 29,000 to 60,000 nests a year from 1989-2006, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission’s Web site. Green turtle nests numbered 267 — 7,158 a year — and leather- back turtles, 27, and 357 annually.

Maxwell said the Kemp’s nest, which was spotted in June, is the fi rst ever reported and hatched in Walton County. The closest nests previously found in the Panhandle, she said, have been at Gulf Islands National Seashore and Perdido Key. “We just lucked out,” Maxwell said: Kemp’s ridleys are daytime nesters, and someone driving by the isolated beach spotted the mother nesting and reported it.

Maxwell said she rushed to the site, but in the 45 minutes it took her to arrive, the turtle had finished nesting and returned to the Gulf of Mexico. Maxwell said someone videotaped the nesting, but she hasn’t been able to find the photographer to ask for a copy.

Maxwell began to suspect the turtle wasn’t one of the typical Walton nesters when she noticed that “we were there 15 minutes after she nested, and we could barely see the track.” Not only were the turtle tracks in the sand between the water’s edge and the nest lighter than usual, she said, but the track was 29 inches across: Loggerhead tracks run 36-38 inches, and a leatherback measures about 72 inches.

After Maxwell passed the information on to Lorna Patrick of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Patrick e-mailed Maxwell back to say it might be a Kemp’s ridley nest. To settle the question, Maxwell said, it was decided that when the eggs hatched, the turtles would be taken from the nest, identifi ed, then released into the water from a boat.
The nest hatched July 30. By then, 51 of the 95 eggs had disappeared from the nest, Maxwell said, though she doesn’t know what happened to them. Seven of the remaining 44 died, leaving 37 live hatchlings.

Many of the 37 were lethargic, Maxwell said, which could be because crabs preying on the eggs had cut the shells too soon.

Published on Saturday, August 18, 2007