Long Key Sea Turtle Nesting Season

As the sea turtle nesting season begins to wind down, it is time to look back to see how this season compared to last year.

The Keys Marine Lab's Biologist Andrew Crowder and his wife, Whitney, a ranger at Long Key State Park have monitored the beaches of Long Key again this year from April 15th until the end of October. This year they even added the Keys youngest sea turtle surveyor to the team, their son Finlee who will be 6 months old in a few days.

The first nest was laid right before the end of April, which was earlier than either of the last two previous years of monitoring, and there have even been crawls as late as the middle of this month. Last year the last crawl occurred at the beginning of July.

There haven't been any tropical storms or hurricanes that have seriously affected the Keys to date, knock on wood, but the raccoons have been busy again destroying all the eggs in 3 nests out at the point in the park. There have also been challenges for the sea turtle hatchlings with disorientations due to lighting, but all in all the nesting has been successful.