Saturday, May 17, 2008

Tomorrow is 'Turtle Walk' morning!

Tomorrow is our turtle monitoring day.

I believe I explained previously that the Sanibel Beach is divided into Zones consisting of aproximately one mile each, with Zone 1 being the eastern tip and the numbers increase as you go further west. Volunteers walk the zones as far as Tarpon Bay Public Beach area. From there on the beach is monitored by SCCF with beach vehicles. There are aproximately 18 miles of beach. Nests are identified and marked for monitoring and protection. Later in the season new hatches are evaluated and recorded. The statewide collection of data helps promote programs that improve the chances for sea turtles to survive.

The first nest has been reported in Zone 5! It is located west of the Sandpiper Beach boardwalk. Each week if we have a nest in our Zone, we are to approach it and check for ants, dog and people tracks and any other evidence of a disturbance and report it. On Thursday, there was a false crawl between Poinciana and White Sands in Zone 6. On Saturday, there were two false crawls at White Sands. Most of the action seems to be in Zones 5 and 6 at this time, hopefully we will see some action in Zone 1.

Hopefully tomorrow I will have some good news to post!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Well,didja?Didja?