For more than 12 hours in Tropical Storm Bertha’s heavy rain and wind, conservationists, vacationers and locals banded together to scour St. George Island’s coastline for baby sea turtles who were washed away by the storm.
Kimberly Crossen, the president of St. George Island Sea Turtle Patrol, said the extreme storm surge from the low-grade tropical storm was a shock to her and other volunteers, and they immediately did their best to survey the nests that were impacted and save baby sea turtles who just hatched but didn’t make it out to sea.
“It’s very sad,” Crossen said. “We were set up for what could have been a record season, and now, we have lost so many.”
Prior to the storm, Crossen said there were 337 sea turtle nests, and 214 were impacted by the July 20 high tides. She said she guesses there are maybe 50 nests that are still viable, but she won’t know for sure until they hatch or she checks them 70 days after they were laid.
Nests along Alligator Point’s beaches, roughly 50 miles east of St. George Island, were also impacted. According to a social media post by Alligator Point’s Sea Turtle Patrol, all seven of the nests there were washed over, and it’s a waiting game to see if any of them will hatch later.
Sea turtle nests can withstand some water washing over them, but when they become inundated with water from high tides like this, water seeps into the porous sand and becomes like cement, pushing all the oxygen out that the baby turtles need to develop, Crossen said.
“Storms are very common here … so we are used to that, but this was just so unexpected,” she said. “This was just a tiny little disturbance. We figured it would rain … but never, ever expected a surge.”
Even the nests high up near the dunes that usually stay dry weren’t entirely safe. Crossen said she was walking along the dune line in knee deep water trying to check on nests and look for hatchlings.
Crossen was able to locate 76 hatchlings with the help of tourists on vacation who found the baby turtles in pools, bushes and more. These baby turtles hatched from high, dune nests, but with the water and rain beating down on them “they just got confused.”
“Guests who were all on vacation were so fantastic,” she said. “They were absolute angels helping us look for hatchlings. Obviously, we can’t be out there 24/7, but they would call and then we’d go run.”
Crossen said she changed her clothes seven times yesterday, switching from a soaking wet set to a dry set, only to have to go back out and get drenched all over again.
The hatchlings she’s collected are in buckets with sand, as Crossen waits for the Gulf to calm so she can release them into the ocean.
“We’re hopeful,” she said. “Nests can survive slight washovers, so we are hopeful. Everybody send us good thoughts and hope we get a lot more nests.”
Elena Barrera can be reached at ebarrera@tallahassee.com. Follow her on X: @elenabarreraaa.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: ‘Very sad’: Bertha floods hundreds of St. George sea turtle nests
Reporting by Elena Barrera, Tallahassee Democrat / Tallahassee Democrat
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Elena Barrera, Tallahassee Democrat | USA TODAY Network
