Sea turtles adapt to rough waters, tropical storms
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Mobile, AL (WALA) — While we’ve managed to dodge the worst of Laura and Marco, the Gulf waters are still as choppy as ever.
The higher tides and rough waters aren’t necessarily always a good thing for our endangered sea turtles here along the Gulf Coast.
Tropical storms and hurricanes often cause many of these nests to wash out.
That means the ground water underneath the sand begins to fill the nest, and if those levels reach a certain height, or the eggs remain there for a lengthy period of time, the baby turtles may not survive.
It will take weeks to know how many nests may be lost after the storms, but while this process seems heartbreaking, Share the Beach Biologist Elizabeth Bevan says this is not the worst threat these turtles face.
“They’re resilient. Once again, they’ve been dealing with storms for millennia, and they have not gone extinct because of storms. They’ve started to decrease in their numbers because of the activities that humans took on the beach,” said Bevan.
Left out beach chairs, toys, or bright lights can cause sea turtles laying their eggs to nest closer to the water, which increases chances of wash outs.
Bevan says sea turtles take storms and other factors into account, and do not put all their eggs in one basket, laying multiple nests in different states every year.
Share the Beach tries not to intervene with relocating nests unless there are extreme circumstances, as they say storms are a part of the turtle’s natural life cycle.
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