At the beginning of June the adult female sea turtles head back to our local beaches to dig their nests and lay approximately 150 eggs per nest. Each female is believed to come back several times in a nesting season and will lay between 3-5 nests in each breeding season that she nests. These hawksbill sea turtles are highly endangered and our turtle group is trying to do its best to protect them while they are here nesting.

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Carvel, our nesting surveyor, must be starting to look familiar to these ladies after eight years of surveys!

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This year we will be working to see that the turtles can safely come out of the water and cross the beach to their favored nesting areas in the vegetation above the high water line. For the first time last summer we had a group of dogs killing these turtles. Because of this we are asking everyone in our area who has a dog to please keep them in your yard during the night and early morning as this is when the turtles are on the beach and fall prey to these dogs. It is well known that dogs, once they start this behavior, will continue to do it so we are hoping that dog owners will step up and help us with this problem.

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Looking at the picture of the turtle tracks, you can see that they leave a seriously noticeable track for the dogs to follow. Often the vegetation is far from the water and the dogs are able to trap the turtle so far from the water that she can't escape...very sad. Please help us or our turtles will be totally gone from here in a very few years. 

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