NESTING SEA TURTLES

PLEASE keep your distance, remain quiet, and keep all lights off (including flashlights, flash photography, and video equipment). Noise and lights can cause the turtle to return to the sea without laying her eggs. Remember, your activities can also affect other turtles nesting in the vicinity.

PLEASE keep hands and other objects off and away from the turtle. After nesting, she may appear slow and hesitant. Touching, prodding, shining lights, or causing commotion may frighten her, disorient her, and cause her to spend less time covering and camouflaging her nest.

SEA TURTLE HATCHLINGS

PLEASE allow hatchings to crawl to the water on their own, as the journey from the nest to the water allows them to imprint on their home beach. Picking the hatchlings up may interfere with this process. Scientists believe the imprinting helps the hatchlings remember where they came from, so they can return and lay their own nests 20 to 30 years later.

PLEASE leave hatchling sea turtles in their nest; they will exit the nest when they are ready. If hatchlings are removed from the nest before they are ready, they are less likely to survive.

PLEASE keep all lights off (including flashlights, flash photography, and video equipment). If hatchling turtles see artificial lights, they become confused, crawling in circles or heading away from the ocean. If they crawl in the wrong direction for very long, they will be eaten by other animals or die of dehydration.

If you find hatchlings wandering in a road, parking lot, or in directions other than toward the water, call the
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission at (888) 404-FWCC or *FWC from your mobile phone. 

Permitted walks are usually offered from May through July each year. The leaders of these walks are trained to aid the public in watching sea turtles without disturbing them.

Click here, for a list of organized walks that you can join.