Turtley Awesome: Conservation and Clean-Up at Egmont Key!

Egmont Key’s visitors aren’t only fishermen and snorkelers—Atlantic loggerhead sea turtles are among Egmont Key’s most important repeat guests. The US Fish & Wildlife Service in 2016 estimated that as many as 70 Atlantic loggerhead sea turtles nest on the island each year. During nesting season—March to October—sea turtles who land on Egmont Key find themselves in the company of almost 1,500 gopher tortoises; 117 different species of birds; and aquatic life like manatees and dolphins. Just last weekend, Take MAR volunteers on the island came upon multiple colorful, roped-off sea turtle nests. 

During July’s Egmont Key Impact Day, volunteers cleaned up the island’s beach,  pruning back plants and removing washed-up plastic, wrappers, and styrofoam from the shore. They collected a total of 175 pounds of trash from the sacred wildlife refuge area - a place off limits to humans as a way to create a sanctuary for the wildlife in the area. Due to trash washing up, and potential trespassers, this debris can pile up and threaten the wildlife. This is why it is crucial that we go in and clean it up before it can become a problem. Take MAR Volunteers also carefully filled in holes in the sand so that future hatchling turtles would not get stuck on their trek to the water. 

Challenges and conservation efforts on the island

Despite these efforts, Egmont Key’s sea turtle visitors have found themselves facing more challenges in recent years. In particular, Egmont Key’s shoreline is disappearing. Erosion has proceeded so rapidly that 80% of the island’s 1875 landmass is simply gone. This erosion has jeopardized the nesting of Atlantic loggerhead sea turtles—a threatened species—on the island. Erosion is far from the only difficulty for nesting sea turtles, who face troubles even if they nest far away from Egmont Key. Conservationists are increasingly turning their hopes toward technological solutions to help sea turtles thrive before, during, and after nesting. 

Before sea turtles dig holes into the sand and lay their eggs, they have to navigate to nesting grounds. Sea turtles migrate between nesting spots and foraging sites in the open ocean, which may be thousands of miles away. During their migration period, sea turtles are especially vulnerable to trawl nets. Fishermen often drag weighted trawl nets along the ocean floor to catch shrimp, but sea turtles can sometimes be caught inside, too. The Turtle Excluder Device (TED) offers an easy fix: It is a metal grid inside the trawl net that tiny shrimp can pass through easily but from which larger animals like turtles can easily escape. In a 2020 review, NOAA reported that shrimp vessels who implemented TEDs documented a 97% exclusion efficiency rate—meaning that the TEDs successfully got turtles caught inside a net out and swimming free 97% of the time. 

Inventions like TEDs can help get nesting turtles out of the net and en route to the shore, but another challenge arises on the sand. Artificial lighting on beaches can confuse new sea turtle hatchlings, who rely on light cues from the moon and stars to navigate toward the sea. If they’re drawn further onto the shore toward bright city lights or glowing hotel signs instead of back to the sea, the hatchlings become vulnerable to dehydration, predation, and increased mortality rates. Accordingly, the Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission has a three-word recommendation for how lighting in sea-turtle-adjacent areas should look: long, low, and shielded. 

By this, they mean that the lighting should have long wavelengths (i.e., colored red or amber on the color spectrum), be low-wattage and low to the ground, and covered with an opaque shield to limit how far the lightbeam extends. Today, there’s a growing market in which outdoor lighting companies are competing to develop products in accordance with those regulations, which they can advertise as turtle-friendly. 

Determining the efficacy of these technologies, of course, depends on having quality data at hand. To that end, one of the most exciting developments for sea turtles around Florida is a sensory and data collection technology project. Technology giant Northrop Grumman, the Brevard Zoo, and three Florida universities (the University of Central Florida, Florida Atlantic University, and University of Florida) are collaborating on Project Turtle Tech to develop an integrated system for image recognition software, droning, tagging, and data collection. 

These innovations can help out turtles—and they can help scientists and conservationists understand how to help out turtles in a sustainable, long-term manner. Keeping generations of sea turtles coming back to places like Egmont Key will require an interdisciplinary effort that integrates new technology. 

BECOME A MEMBER OF OUR EGMONT KEY ALLIANCE TODAY TO BECOME PART OF THE SOLUTION!!

Sources

Clearwater Marine Aquarium. (N.D.). Sea Turtle Safe Lighting. 

https://mission.cmaquarium.org/sea-turtle-safe-lighting-guide/

National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. (2021, April). Endangered Species Act 

(ESA) - Section 7 Consultation Biological Opinion. NOAA Fisheries. https://media.fisheries.noaa.gov/2021-04/2021%20SHRIMP%20OPINION.pdf?null 

National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. (2021, April). Sea Turtle Friendly 

Lighting: A Model Ordinance for Local Governments. https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/35334/noaa_35334_DS1.pdf 

Northrop Grumman. (N.D.). Project Turtle Tech. 

https://www.northropgrumman.com/sustainability/turtle-tech 

US Fish & Wildlife Service. (2016, October). Egmont Key National Wildlife Refuge.  

https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/EgmontKeyTearsheet%2716.pdf 

World Wildlife Fund. (2016, June). How a Simple Technology Is Saving Turtles. 

https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/articles/how-a-simple-technology-is-saving-turtles