Eve Haverfield, president of Turtle Time sea turtle monitoring program, couldn’t wait to see how her reptilian friends fared. She and several other volunteers inspected nests on Bonita Beach and Fort Myers Beach today morning, and encountered no casualties.

Everybody’s high and dry. Nobody got washed over. We’re totally optimistic, but we do have another high tide to go through.

“As far as I understand, there’s no tidal surge anticipated. So, all that worry is hopefully for naught,” Haverfield said at 11 a.m., after coming off the beach.

Turtle Time is monitoring 43 nests on Fort Myers Beach and 55 on Bonita Beach.

There’s also a nest on Bokeelia Island, on Charlotte Harbor, that Haverfield said is unprecedented in her monitoring experience, going back to 1989. It’s the only nest about which Haverfield expressed concern.

“It’s on a piece of property that’s primarily comprised of Indian mounds. We staked it out and we hope it will be a successful nest,” Haverfield said.

Haverfield said this nesting season has been a banner year, compared to 2007, when only eight loggerheads nested on Fort Myers Beach.

“We’ve even had at least three green turtle nests on Sanibel, as well,” she said.

Green sea turtles are listed as endangered on Florida’s list of imperiled species. Loggerheads are classified as threatened.

“We have lost some nests, with embryos not reaching term, because of heavy rains in July,” Haverfield said of loggerhead nests in areas where Fort Myers Beach is groomed by raking. Haverfield said raking flattens the beach so it has no grade, nor drainage.

“Water pools and the sand compacts like cement. It’s not a good environment for sea turtles and, quite frankly, for people either. You get this green slime on the sand when it’s had water on it for a few days,” Haverfield said.

“They can’t tolerate supersaturated sand conditions. But the nests up in the dune system have done well."

Bron: News-Press