Community-Based Conservation for Gulf of Mexico Sea Turtles. Project # 1302.13.037699. Final programmatic report.

Abstract

Help support the largest community-based marine turtle conservation project in Florida by engaging volunteers in protecting sea turtle nests, tracking predators, and reducing light pollution. In 2014, we completed our 33rd year of community-based conservation with the help of 316 trained volunteers and 14 interns monitoring nests across approximately 35 miles of some of the densest nesting beaches on the Gulf Coast of Florida. This year not only were we just short of the all time nest count record, but depredations and washouts were low allowing for 2,404 of the 2,461 nests laid to hatch. This makes 2014 our most productive year in terms of hatchling production. Team leaders were trained and introduced on each of the five keys we patrol to help and unite the volunteers and free up staff to train 10 new volunteers to verify, mark and inventory nests. We also conducted a predator control study in a predator prone area of privately owned nesting beach where collaboration with the Casey Key Association (homeowners), the Sea Turtle Conservancy (funding), our turtle patrol staff (data collection) and USDA (predator trapping) studied the impact of predator control on predations of sea turtle nests in areas where other methods had proven less effective. Finally, our tagging team tagged 190 new turtles, encountered 77 remigrants and was able to utilize 12 previously satellite tagged turtles with known histories to provide high quality data to a new contaminant study. With the high retention of trained volunteers we are ready for another big nesting season and expect even better success in 25 years when fruits of our labor - the hatchlings from this year return to nest.