Over the last few weeks, trained personnel and volunteers in Treasure Coast, Florida have been painstakingly moving over 4,100 sea turtle eggs from 45 nests to protect them from upcoming restoration projects.
Since March, beach monitors have moved 3,984 eggs from 44 leatherback nests and 122 eggs from a single loggerhead nest.
Both leatherbacks and loggerheads are endangered and have faced population declines from coastal development, boat strikes, and entanglement from abandoned fishing gear.
However, despite a harrowing 2024 hurricane season that wiped out hundreds of nests, recent conservation efforts have helped sea turtle populations bounce back.
In fact, 2025 was the highest recorded year for leatherback nesting in the state.
And although upcoming sand restoration projects are necessary to combat coastal erosion — which escalates ecosystem loss and puts sea turtles at risk — it also presents additional challenges.
“[One] way to combat property erosion on beaches is to bring in truckloads of sand,” the The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission stated on their website.
“If the sand is of a different consistency or is too compacted, the nesting behaviors of turtles can be drastically altered. If the renourishment is done during nesting season, there is also a possibility nests will be buried too far underground or be run over by trucks.”
To save local sea turtles and their eggs from the forthcoming bulldozers and dump trucks, beach monitors have been hard at work.
Image via Carol Van Hook (CC BY-SA 2.0)
According to Joseph Scarola, a senior scientist and sea turtle lighting specialist with Ecological Associates Inc., monitoring crews begin patrols at 9 p.m. each night.
When a turtle is found, beach monitors contact relocation teams and share the exact location.
The relocators carefully place each egg by hand into sand-lined containers without rotating them, then record the nest’s dimensions so they can recreate it at the next site — a location that is kept secret to thwart poachers.
In addition to physically moving sea turtle eggs, local conservationists have also been working to reduce light pollution along the coast.
“Nesting sea turtles look for dark, quiet beaches to lay their eggs. Lights from buildings along the beach distract and confuse the females,” the FWC said. “Any distractions may frighten and disorient her, causing her to return to the ocean before completely covering and camouflaging her nest.”
“The fewer obstacles sea turtles have to overcome,” they stated, “the better their chances of successful nesting.”
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Header image via PICRYL (PDM 1.0)
