Now that the 2024 sea turtle nesting season has been called (ended) on Hunting Island, let’s look back historically to 1981. We have 43 years of information on nesting on HI (take away one year where a hurricane destroyed the data.)
Looking at total nests per year, I find the trend interesting and informative (IMHO):
We had the abysmal years in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.
The early 1980’s were spectacular. Only now are we approaching and exceeding those years. It took us 30 years from the 1980’s to get back there.
Biologists say loggerhead turtles nest every 2-3 years (it is tough work creating and laying eggs) on average hence that is why we have low nesting years and cycles in the nesting data. You can see the cycles in the information. I think 2024 is our new low year standard. A pretty good low point in the cycle at 128 nests. By comparison, in 2000 we had a low in the cycle of about 35 nests.
The recent trend is definitely up!! Good work. What was it that created this trend we now see? Personally, I think it was the mandating of TED’s by federal and state agencies in 1987 (TED = turtle excluder devices). Not to say that shrimpers didn’t see the problem - they helped develop the solution! Collaboration can and does work. A quote from a David Lauderdale article in Aug. 2019 regarding Hilton Head - “That was the summer of 1981, and Nanci Polk-Weckhorst found almost as many dead adult turtles washed ashore (38) as live turtle nests (41).”
But it was not just TED’s, there is also the matter of focus within the SCDNR, along with Sally Murphy driving conservation programs such as ours. Another quote from Lauderdale in the same article - ““Turning the Tide,” Sally Murphy’s memoir and the bible of how sea turtles became protected, says that three of the first five turtle-monitoring projects in the state were in Beaufort County.” Thank you volunteers. Hunting Island’s conservation program began in 1981.
TED’s were mandated in 1987. Add in 25-30 years for a hatchling to reach maturity, and voila 1987+30 = 2017. So the mother sea turtles not caught up in nets after 1987 were able to nest and give us hatchlings that are now coming back on the beaches as first time mothers.
Conservation does work and it can happen collaboratively.
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