BRADENTON BEACH, Fla — Almost 100 sea turtle nests on Anna Maria Island were washed away by Tropical Storm Debby's storm surge.
For the last couple of days, Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch has been assessing the hundreds of sea turtle nests along the beaches to determine whether they may still be viable.
More than 200 nests were found intact, while other nests appeared viable and were marked again with stakes.
“We are hopeful that the remaining nests will still hatch," Turtle Watch Executive Director Kristen Mazzarella said.
Mazzarella and volunteers have picked up more than 1,000 wooden stakes knocked over by the storm surge.
“The rest of our cleanup is checking for every nest that has been out here before, checking off to see if we still see the stakes out there, the nest is still possibly viable," she said.
More than 150 nests still have lost all their stakes and need to be assessed, as Mazzarella and others have put in long days on the beach.
Turtle Watch continues with its regular duties of looking for and identifying crawls, new nests, and hatches. Nests are also excavated three days after they hatch to do an inventory of what the nest produced.
During one excavation on Wednesday morning, Mazzarella found some hatchlings that had been caught in the roots of the seagrapes. Mazzarella explained that this can happen when nests are laid too close to the seagrapes.
“Some of them were caught in there, including the one that we found alive, but a couple of them may have drowned in the storm.”
Beachgoers kept stopping to see what was going on, delighted to get to see a baby sea turtle. Jason Lloyd, on vacation with his brother on the island, was among those who stopped to watch in awe.
“Absolutely amazing. That is definitely the coolest thing I’ll see all day," Lloyd said.
After letting the little one stretch its legs for a bit on the sand, a volunteer put the hatchling in a bucket, and the plan was to release it later Wednesday, after dark.
The loss of so many nests to Tropical Storm Debby comes as Anna Maria Island has seen a record number of sea turtle nests this season. Last month, the previous record of 543 nests was set in 2019.
“It was way above record numbers, so we were super excited. So to see that many washed out is really disappointing," Mazzarella said.
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