Keeping Count: Sea turtle nesting season ends on Sanibel island

Thousands of baby sea turtles have hatched and have made their way to their forever home on Sanibel Island, marking the end of nesting season.

Despite the storms, these tiny hatchlings are a hopeful sign for the future.

Baby sea turtles cracked out of their shells and pushed their way to the surface on Sanibel. The six-month-long sea turtle nesting season just wrapped up, and the early numbers are coming in.

“Our hatchling counts were 16,722 Loggerhead sea turtles emerged,” said Denise Blough, from the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation.

That’s a lot of baby sea turtles the SCCF counted.

All of those hatchlings are a good sign to people like Billie-Joe Roberts. That’s because, with all of the storms that passed by, she was worried.

“When the storms came through with them, I was a little concerned,” Roberts said.

But despite the storms, the newest generation of sea turtles are breaking free from the hundreds of nests scattered around Sanibel and crawling toward the water.

“Our preliminary season totals for sea turtle nests are 839 loggerhead nests, three green sea turtle nests and one leatherback nest,” Blough said.

Even though there are thousands of new sea turtles calling Southwest Florida home, Erik Ivan, who came all the way from Indiana, didn’t get to see any during his vacation.

“I wish I would have seen them for the kids because we got a couple kids with us, so I think they would have enjoyed it,” Ivan said.

The latest numbers from SCCF show that 34 green sea turtles and 40 leatherback baby sea turtles emerged, and each of those leatherback sea turtles is important because they all give the endangered species a hopeful future.