GULF SHORES, AL – Every year as the days get longer and the sand heats up along the Alabama Gulf Coast, female loggerhead sea turtles, some weighing as much as 400 pounds, pull themselves from their watery habitat onto our sandy beaches to lay there nests. 

Sea Turtle nesting season starts on May 1 and goes to Oct. 31.

Share the Beach, Alabama’s sea turtle conservation project, has been working for more than 14 years to protect their precious nests and nesting habitat.  They help mitigate the effects of human development such as lights on Alabama’s beaches. 

Sea Turtle nesting season starts on May 1 most nests are laid by the end of August but the hatching will continue until the end of October. Training for new and returning volunteers will start on April 7, 6 p.m. at the Gulf Shores Activity Center.

You must be at least 18 to volunteer but adults with younger children may volunteer and work together. The meeting should last about an hour and a half.

The story of our nesting sea turtles is very interesting. For about two hours in the middle of the night they will expose themselves to the dangers of the open beach; foxes, coyotes, dogs, large holes, a gauntlet of canopies, furniture and condo lights. Not to mention people trying to take selfies with the turtle or ride it.

Any disturbing or harassing of a sea turtle or a sea turtle nest on the beach is a violation of the Endangered Species Act and could lead to a $100,000 fine and or a year in jail. Luckily, most of our turtles nest without incident. 

If all goes well for the mama sea turtle, she will stay on the beach long enough to dig a 20 inch deep nest using only her back flippers, then deposit on average about 110 eggs, cover them up well and make her way back to the sea.

Some turtles may lay as many as five nests in a season. The beach they choose for this process is special; it is the beach where they began their journey as a hatchling many years ago, it is her natal beach.

Trained volunteers with the program, dressed in the bright green uniform T-shirts, patrol the beaches at sunrise, looking for the signs that a mama loggerhead sea turtle has nested in the night. Nests are marked and monitored through hatching, usually about 65 days, to make sure all the hatchlings make it safely to the water.

Loggerhead hatchlings are particularly susceptible to artificial lighting, primarily white lights, along the beach. These lights from condos, parking decks and lots, homes and streets pose a threat by attracting the young turtles like a magnet, leading them away from water and to their eventual death.

That is the reason we encourage home owners and condos to turn off any white lights that shine out on the beach at night during nesting season.  We strongly encourage converting all beachside light fixtures to ones that are turtle friendly with red or dark amber bulbs.

Gone are days when beach houses had flood lights shining out on the beach, we now know that is bad for sea turtles and shore birds. To help mitigate the problems with lights, Share the Beach volunteers monitor the nests closely and then a few days before the projected hatching date they will erect a light blocking tarp to cast a shadow on the path of the hatchlings making it easier for them to find the sea.

Volunteers with the program are taught how to identify the signs of nesting and how to document the nest site, but most of the work involves walking the beach in the early morning. The trained volunteers, working under the authority of an endangered species permit, patrol about a mile of beach, usually one or two days a week looking for new nests.

Later in the season when the hatching starts the volunteers take shifts at the nests watching for the baby turtles emerging from under the sand.  They are there to make sure the hatchlings make it safely to the water.

This year there is a new program in the city of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, it is called Leave Only Footprints.  It is a bold plan aimed at cleaning up our beaches. 

Both of the cities enacted ordinances that require all beach goers to take with them at the end of the day any trash and their chairs and umbrellas, leaving only footprints. This will also help eliminate many on the obstacles that nesting turtles encounter on the beach at night.

For more information about sea turtles and Share the Beach visit www.ShareTheBeach.com or call 866-732-8878.  You can also follow us on Twitter @ShareTheBeach or like us on Facebook, Share the Beach.