Video shows sea turtle hatchlings making pilgrimage to Gulf

Baby sea turtles have a hard time surviving.

Video shows hatchlings making the trek to the water in Collier County.

From people to predators, they don’t always make it. If that doesn’t get to them, there’s fear red tide will.

Experts say when sea turtles eventually make it to the water, red tide won’t hurt them.

“I was explaining to her how they hatch at night and follow the moonlight and they go into the water,” said beachgoer Carolina Savarina.

Savarina brought her daughter Skylar to Naples Beach to show her a sea turtle nest for the first time.

Little did she know, beachgoers captured the moments on video of a handful of baby sea turtles making the crawl.

“You can actually almost feel their energy and how they just want to hurry up in the water,” Savarina said.

But the question many of us have is will the babies survive if red tide hits again?

“It’s a sad thing to think it could be one more thing to harm them,” said Collier County resident Nancy Santora.

Santora said it’s hard enough for the baby turtles.

“They have so many predators they’re lucky if they get to the water, and then when they get to the water there’s predators in there that pick them up,” Santora said.

Experts say red tide won’t affect the babies. Once they get to the water, they quickly swim to the middle of the Gulf where there are less algae toxins. They usually end up settling somewhere else.

As for adults, those are the turtles the red tide really hurts. They live off and along the Southwest Florida shores where red tide is concentrated.

“It’s super sad, it just kind of break my heart because eventually what’s going to happen is we’re going to have less and less turtles, so it saddens me,” Savarina said.

Collier County’s environmental specialist told WINK News so far this year’s they’ve seen 60 injured or dead sea turtles —mostly from red tide— which is double than what they saw last year. The