Early Sea Turtle Nest, Then Nothing

The earliest leatherback sea turtle in ever recorded in Florida was found in Boca Raton on February 12 of this year.  One of our City beachrakers reported the nest early on that day as he was raking the beach and a Turtle Specialist and myself went out to verify and mark the nest.  Sea turtle nesting season did not officially start until March 1.  Three other early leatherback nests were reported in Southeast Florida in February making this the “busiest” February ever in the State.  I is difficult to say why this has happened, one can hypothesize that global warming may have an effect as there is evidence that the loggerhead peak nesting time is two weeks sooner now than it was 15 years ago.  One year of early leatherback nesting does not make a trend and we need to keep monitoring in the future to get a better understanding of what is happening.

After getting such an early nest, we were expecting more nesting activity since we had a record high number of leatherback nests last year.  So far, we have not had an additional nest in Boca Raton since February 12 till April 6.  I am really at a loss to explain this fact!  Hopefully things will cahnge soon, or neighbors to the north in Highland Beach reported their first leatherback nest on April 5.  Hopefully our dry spell will end soon!