Sea Turtles Scramble
We were recently on the beach at Boca Grande Pass in Florida, 90 miles south of Tampa, watching young sea turtles scramble. It seems that a young girl, while digging a sand castle, had uncovered an unmarked sea turtle nest. Most turtle nests are found the morning after they’re created, since sea turtles dig their nests at night. They leave a broad track in the sand, like a tractor tire has passed over. So the turtle volunteers rope the nest off with pink ribbon and stakes. But somehow, perhaps because of storm, wind and tide, park rangers had missed this nest. Months later the little turtles came out scrambling—-their dark hideout uncovered by a young girl.
So the park rangers were called in, who brought along a turtle specialist, who dug and examined the nest. There were dead turtles preyed upon by ghost crabs—-a swift and efficient predator. There were eggs that shriveled and didn’t survive. And empty eggs where turtles had hatched and scrambled to the sea and freedom, where many another predator lurks beyond the surf.
We were there early in the morning before the tourists arrive, and watched the excavation. It was too bad my dad wasn’t there, a faculty member from the University of Miami who studied sea turtles in the Atlantic and also the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, where he helped discover a secret nesting beach covered with thousands of turtles, with the story and photos making National Geographic magazine.
We still have his boxes of files, letters and stamps from other countries, people who found his drift cards, which are plastic cards that drift flush with the water and currents, instead of the wind. They were dropped offshore where sea turtles congregate and nest, there to drift along with the turtles to their next stops. From Africa to South America, then around through the Caribbean. Even tiny Ascension Island in mid-Atlantic where turtles nest, had my dad’s drift cards float ashore. The idea of prevailing currents carrying sea turtles (which are weak swimmers) to favorite nesting sites was considered heresy by prevailing turtle “experts,” who were convinced each turtle was ingrained with the sands of their native beach, enabling them to somehow return and nest again. (Like salmon). As my dad used to say before he passed away, “an entire generation of turtle research students have been raised on this dogma.”
But we’ve gone off on a small tangent here. The park rangers at Gasparilla State Park, of which Boca Grande Pass is a part, showed us the young loggerhead turtles still in the nest—-ready to head offshore for an uncertain fate in the Gulf and Atlantic. Between the predators and underwater plumes of BP oil far offshore and undetected, these little turtles have many adventures ahead of them.
Our visit to Boca Grande Pass was impressive, just from the sheer amount of wildlife visiting there in July Eight sea turtle nests, a dozen manatees passing by, the crab migration, and the fish.
