- April 26, 2024
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Will the Flagler Beach City Commission choose to do the right thing for our sea turtles or choose to ignore them and allow a few selfish residents have beach bonfires during sea turtle nesting season?
It is just a six-month period, May 1 through Oct. 31, during which we could make our beaches safe for nesting mother turtles and emerging hatchlings. This ban would also be in compliance with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. Both recommend, in the administrative code titled “Prohibition of activities disruptive to marine turtles” to not allow bonfires.
The Endangered Species Act states that it is unlawful to harass sea turtles. “Harass” is defined by regulation as an intentional or negligent act or omission which creates the likelihood of injury to wildlife by annoying it to such an extent as to significantly disrupt normal behavioral patterns.
Emergent sea turtle hatchlings find the sea by a visual response to light. They are hard-wired to look for the glow of the moon reflected off the waves. Artificial light sources can disrupt that behavior, causing hatchlings to crawl away from the ocean and toward the brighter glow of a fire.
Flagler Beach has a lighting ordinance that states that there should be no visible light from the beach or any source of light from a manmade device. Fire, unless caused by lightning, is manmade and visible.
There are documented cases of hatchlings crawling towards bonfires, two such instances in Flagler Beach last summer, causing hatchlings to waste valuable energy that is needed to swim for days out in the ocean, nonstop, until they reach the sargassum to rest and finally feed.
Only one in 1,000 sea turtle hatchlings will survive to adulthood, which is about 25 years old, to reproduce. Then the female will return to the same beach where she was born to lay her eggs. Every sea turtle hatchling is important to the survival of the species.
Flagler Beach is a nesting beach for three species of sea turtles. All are listed as either endangered or threatened. Loggerheads are our most common, with greens and leatherbacks being less common. The east coast of Florida is where 90% of the world’s loggerhead population nests. Last year we had 84 nests in Flagler Beach, down from the 134 nests we had in 2010. Yes, loggerhead nesting is declining.
The nest step is extinction.
Flagler Beach resident Lori Ottlein is a volunteer with the Flagler Turtle Patrol.
