Media Coverage of Our Singer Island Sea Turtle Group

Home Loggerheads Greens Leatherbacks Nesting Statistics 1996-2004 Leatherback Tracking Map Join a Turtle-Watching Tour this Summer Student Internships Local Turtle News & Info Recent Research Findings Links to Other Turtle Web Sites Officers & Board Members Singer Island Turtle League Visit Our Online Book & Video Store Search Sign Our Guest Book

Volunteers Keep Baby Turtles Safe From Civilization in Nesting Season By Marion Dozier Sun-Sentinel August 19, 2001 ... 96, 97, 98 — Debbie Sobel counts the ripped bits of papery egg shells out of which dozens of loggerhead turtle hatchlings, as small as her palm, emerged three days before. She is on the beach, on her knees, “excavating,” or digging up an empty sea turtle nest — a hole 18 inches below the surface — to document what it had contained. It’s 7:30 a.m., and the barefoot Sobel has been walking Singer Island beach in central Palm Beach County for almost an hour, criss-crossing the shore, looking this way and that for telltale signs that nests have been laid, disturbed or hatched. She still has another two hours or so to go to cover the 2 1/2 miles she or another volunteer monitors every weekday morning. Sobel is one of 17 people in Palm Beach County who have permits from the state to be, essentially, turtle vigilantes — people who spend hours and hours, usually without pay, combing county beaches and battling poachers, predators, even condominium lights. Each permit holder — Broward County has two, Miami-Dade, five — in turn can recruit and train up to 25 others to monitor the beaches. In Palm Beach County, permit holders range from volunteers like Sobel and Jose Echeverria, 80, in Highland Beach — “doing it out of the goodness of their hearts,” according to Paul Davis, environmental program supervisor for the county — to government-employed marine biologists such as those at Boca Raton’s Gumbo Limbo Nature Center. In Broward and Miami-Dade counties, permit holders and beach monitors are mainly employees of state parks, county recreation departments and state or national marine agencies. Palm Beach has many more volunteers in part because Broward and Miami-Dade have more of a top-down approach to beach management, and because there are more turtle nests. In 1999, for instance, Palm Beach County had almost 17 percent of the state’s turtle nests, while Broward had about 6 percent and Miami-Dade 1 percent. Wherever the monitors are, their mission is thus: to protect and document the increasingly threatened lives of leatherback, loggerhead and green turtle hatchlings and the nests that incubate them. Sobel finishes counting the pieces of shells, and finds that the excavated nest held 122 eggs. And she discovers something else: three tiny hatchlings buried alive under the sand. Nesting season She picks them up gingerly, puts them on the sand and watches two of them sprint for the sea. A third just goes around in circles. He ends up in a styrofoam bowl, soon to be chauffeured — in Sobel’s black Lexus with the turtle tag, no less — to the Marinelife Center of Juno Beach, which rehabilitates marine animals. “That one, there may be something wrong with it, and it may not have gotten out on its own if we hadn’t excavated,” Sobel says. During the official turtle nesting season, March 1 to Oct. 31, ordinary Palm Beach County residents fan out across a shoreline with one of the nation’s densest nesting areas — the county’s north end near Tequesta averages up to 1,500 nests per mile. By contrast, Broward County averages about 125 nests per mile along its 24 miles of coast. “What we do is no small task, but our great volunteers and permit holders really help,” said Meghan Conti, environmental specialist for the state conservation commission. “They’re our eyes and ears out there, the ones who really run the program. We couldn’t do what we do without them.” It is indeed a massive effort. About 16,000 turtle nests are laid on Palm Beach County beaches alone every year, a rate second only to Brevard County. The state attempts to document the existence of every single one of them. When nests are laid south of Palm Beach County, workers move most of them to turtle hatcheries. In Broward County, the paid monitors excavate and relocate about 65 percent of nests on the day they’re laid. The goal is to keep the newborn turtles from being disoriented by lighting from commercial strips and beachfront housing, said Lou Fisher, natural resources specialist for Broward’s planning and environmental protection department. Lights draw hatchlings unnaturally west to certain death instead of east to the moonlit ocean. Two Broward cities — Pompano Beach and Deerfield Beach — have ordinances requiring beachfront lights to be turned off at night during turtle season. A similar county ordinance affects only 1 1/2 miles of unincorporated beach. Fisher said the county recently passed an amendment requiring all cities to have such ordinances by February. Many cities in Palm Beach County, and the county itself, have laws requiring lights to be doused for turtles during nesting season, as does one town in Miami-Dade, Golden Beach. Depending upon which beach they patrol, trained volunteers see and fret over a variety of man-made problems, and make dutiful reports to the state. Radiating light is just one of them. Bits of plastic can choke a female adult if ingested, and eggs can be crushed by beach-cleaning tractors or chair-dragging tourists. Volunteers are almost universally opposed to beach renourishment, because the hard, compacted sand makes it difficult for turtles to dig nests. Teen helper On a recent Sunday morning on Singer Island, Sobel walked with James Irwin, a slight, bespectacled 18-year-old from Liverpool who is intrigued by turtles. Irwin graduated from high school in May, and is spending a month in Palm Beach County, volunteering at the Marinelife Center, the MacArthur Beach State Park and walking on Sobel’s route. He discovered Sobel — founder of the nonprofit Sea Turtle Conservation League of Singer Island — and South Florida’s massive turtle protection effort on the Internet. He was mostly quiet along the way, eyes roving the shore just as Sobel had taught him. He talked about the 14-inch land turtle he keeps at home. He recorded figures for Sobel. And when she let the two hatchlings go free to find the water, just as nature commanded, Irwin accompanied their trek, making sure they made it OK. “Gosh,” he said quietly, “I love this.” Marian Dozier can be reached at mdozier@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6643. Copyright © 2001, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Home   Loggerheads, Greens, Leatherbacks    Nesting Statistics

Leatherback Tracking Map    Join a Turtle-Watching Tour This Summer

Student Internships    Local Turtle News & Info    Recent Research Findings

Links to Other Turtle Web Sites   

Visit Our Online Book & Video Store   

Search    Sign Our Guest Book