Despite climate change worries, sea turtles are breaking records as biologists in the U.S. report discovering the most nests since 2016. On beaches in Florida, preliminary reports recorded more than 133,840 loggerhead turtle nests and 76,500 green turtle nests.
So particularly with climate change, reproductive output of all of these nests is actually quite low compared to what it should be.
Justin Perrault, Loggerhead Marinelife Center
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The record numbers are not limited to Florida beaches; other states, like South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama and Georgia, have also seen a rise in nests this year, as female turtles made their slow journey up beaches, like they have done for millions of years to lay their eggs.
The increase in nests comes despite climate change piling onto the already challenging nesting process. Justin Perrault, the director of research at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center, told the Associated Press that the world’s sea turtles aren’t out of the sand–er, woods–yet.
“You’ve got habitat loss and sea level rise and coastal armoring, a lot of these things that have come up pretty heavily in that last several decades that the turtle now has to combat,” Perrault said. “So particularly with climate change, reproductive output of all of these nests is actually quite low compared to what it should be.”
Roughly one in every 1,000 sea turtle hatchlings makes it to adulthood. A turtle’s journey from its nest to the ocean is already riddled with threats from humans and predators. For instance, hatchlings use the moon to navigate to the water, and light pollution from streetlights and hotels can confuse them and point them in the wrong direction.
While biologists are concerned that climate change will continue to threaten sea turtles in the future, warmer temperatures have already affected the species for years. Sand temperatures play a direct role in the gender of hatchlings, and more heatwaves in Florida over the past few years have made the sand warmer, leading to a gender imbalance.
According to a manager at a turtle hospital in Florida, an Australian study found that nearly 99% of new turtle hatchlings are female.
As temperatures rise globally, a study by a Florida State University professor found that turtles will have to start nesting much earlier or much later than normal. Though nesting rates are up this year, the fear, according to the study, is the climate may be changing too quickly for the turtles to evolve and survive as a species.
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