“With everyone joining in to make this place a more turtle-friendly environment, our nesting numbers will improve,” says Kendra Cope, who started her new job May 1 as the Sea Turtle Coordinator and Environmental Specialist for Indian River County. The position was previously held by Rick Herren, founder of the nonprofit Coastal Biology Inc., who accepted a position with Sea Turtle Conservancy.
Each year, from March through September, thousands of sea turtles emerge from the ocean, ponderously drag themselves up the beach to the dune line, and seek suitable spots to lay their eggs; a process they may repeat along the coastline. Chances are great that residents will see a nesting turtle during the summer months, as our area beaches are among the most productive in the western hemisphere. However, Cope encourages everyone to view the process with a group permitted by U.S. Fish and Wildlife, whose trained guides are sensitive to the turtles’ behavior. Voices, flashlights and human interference can force these prehistoric reptiles to return to the sea and repeat the exhaustive process somewhere else.
The most common of the species in our area are loggerhead (threatened), green and leatherback (both endangered). And while there is no way to definitively predict numbers, Cope says green and leatherback nesting tends to be cyclical.
“It all depends on the food sources. Nesting intervals are determined by food and resource availability at their foraging grounds, which can be hundreds of thousands of miles away. Leatherbacks feed off of Nova Scotia, because that’s where the jelly fish are, but nest here.”
Cope expects it to be an average year for loggerheads, adding, “Our nesting numbers have been quite steady. It should be good. And honestly, with the help of the community, it’s only going to get better.”
As of June 25, Indian River County nesting surveys indicate 47 leatherback, 477 green, and 3,269 loggerhead nests, and the hatchling season has begun for those nests laid in March and April. Depending on sand temperature, incubation is roughly 60 days, after which the silver-dollar sized babies scramble up and emerge en masse, orienting themselves to the brightest horizon, before making their treacherous dash to the sea.
And while humans cannot do much about the natural predators they will encounter along the way, such as birds and crabs, there are numerous man-made obstacles that can easily be corrected to help nesting turtles and hatchlings alike – filling in holes dug by children and dogs, removing chairs and other items from the beach, not lighting bonfires and most importantly, limiting lighting, both the intensity and the direction.
“The county is currently amending its lights ordinance and so that’s been my main focus this summer,” says Cope. “What’s changing is that now you can get cited if you can see point source [lightbulb] or reflection from any place on the beach or an illumination of the beach. It’s super-important to be cautious about our lights, because the hatchlings have a limited source of energy, which is just enough to get them from their nest to the water, where they are able to feed. It’s a frequent issue of hatchlings crawling into back yards and parking lots, putting them in great danger from predators, human activity and starvation.”
Ideally, outdoor lighting should be amber or red, and blinds should be closed at night to reduce the illumination of inside lights from homes, hotels and businesses.
“If we can work together in the future to implement more turtle-friendly beachside lighting, we’ll have less instances of hatchling fatalities or disorientation,” she adds.
If beachgoers encounter a hatchling emergence, they should let nature take its course, watching from a distance and letting them crawl to the ocean on their own, without any human “help” or intervention.
“This is an important time for them to magnetically orient themselves to the North Pole and imprint to the beach,” says Cope. Imprinting is critical as females return to nest at the beach of their birth.
“And by crawling to the ocean they’re developing the muscles and strength to swim in the ocean. Once they get to the ocean they’re actively swimming all the time.”
Male sea turtles never return to land and females do so only to nest, which can be many years after their first dip.
Cope recently finished her Master’s degree in biology with the University of Central Florida Marine Turtle Research Group, working the past three years out of the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge. She maintains all of the county-wide nesting and success rate data, personally coordinating nest monitoring in the southern half of the county, and working with Disney monitors and with Ecological Associates International, which monitors nests in the north county beach refurbishment areas.
She is passionate about creating community outreach and public awareness events to educate people on ways they can help. Even her thesis was pertinent to the area: “Determining the economic value of marine turtle ecosystem services (Turtle Walks) in Brevard and Indian River Counties, FL.”
Cope typically begins her day at sunrise, identifying and counting the number of nests and false crawls, and marking off a small sample of nests.
“One of the things people don’t know is that we don’t put stakes around every nest. We put them around every 15th nest,” Cope explains. “A lot of people think we don’t have that many nests. It’s because you don’t see all of them. We have such a high-density nesting beach that we wouldn’t have space to enjoy the beach if we had stakes marking all the nests off.”
She estimates that from the Sebastian Inlet to the south county line, there are roughly100 to 150 nests every day. Although turtles attempt to meticulously camouflage their nests, predators such as raccoons, coyotes and household pets are a continual threat. A female can lay between 80 and 120 eggs, which might sound like a lot, but only about 1 in 1,000 survives the perilous journey to adulthood.
Cope is also a first responder for sea turtle strandings. She stresses that anyone can report a sea turtle or other marine mammal stranding by calling the Fish and Wildlife Center hotline, 888-404-3922.
“The other day I got a call that there was a turtle stranded at Turtle Trail,” says Cope. “It turned out the turtle had been there three hours and no one told me. It got taken care of but it’s something that we could have taken care of sooner if someone knew the number.”
Cope’s position, and that of Coastal Engineer James Gray, was created through the County Habitat Conservation Plan, instituted as a mitigation measure for an Incidental Take Permit covering the impact of sea walls, which requires nest monitoring and programs on beachfront lighting, predator control and sea turtle education.