GULF SHORES, Ala. – Wednesday morning the neon green shirts returned to the beach about sunrise as Share the Beach volunteers begin patrolling for signs of turtle nesting.

More than 400 people have signed up for patrols that will continue through Aug. 31 on all 47 miles of Gulf front in Alabama. All of the volunteers, including returning volunteers must go through training every year to participate in the program.

Wearing the shirt is a big part of the volunteer program.

“When you do your patrol you have to wear your green shirt,” Gulf State Park Naturalist Kelly Reetz said. “That says you are representing the Share the Beach program.”

Volunteers, Reetz said, are also a valuable public relations tool during the nesting and hatching seasons. To volunteer, visit sharethebeach.com and click on the volunteering button at the top left.

“Part of volunteering for this program is talking to the public,” she said. “There’s a lot of education that we do. So you might walk the beach and find nothing but people will stop you because you have on your neon green shirt and they’ll say ‘hey, tell us about the program.’ And you have to tell and do it with a smile on your face because education is the key to saving our turtles.”

When nests hatch, crowds tend to gather and volunteers play an important part in crowd control.

“Sometimes we’ll have as many as 200 people, visitors, waiting and watching for a nest to hatch,” Reetz said. “That’s a lot of people for one team to handle. Other people, other teams will show up in their shirts for backup so we can mix in with the crowd and to help keep them under control, make sure they are following our guidelines and make sure the turtles are safe.”

Once the season starts, nesting turtles can be very active.

“Female turtles lay eggs every other week so she can lay up to eight nests during that time,” Reetz said at a recent training session. “Hatchlings begin in the middle of July usually about 55 days after the first nest was laid unless it’s been really hot or drought conditions. Then we start watching them about day 45.”

Hatching marks the second half of the turtle season.

“The hatches will continue all the way through the end of October and we have had some if it’s nice and warm in November,” Reetz said. “If they don’t hatch by sometime in November, they don’t hatch.”

More than 7,100 hatchlings, a record number, made their way into the Gulf with the help of Share the Beach in 2012. The 108 hatchings is another record as is the total number of nests for a season, 149.

According to Share the Beach Chairman of the Board Mike Reynolds, the total number of eggs was 11,400 with 7,508 hatchlings and 7,159 of those made it to the Gulf giving the group a 62.4 success rate.

Orange Beach Captain Lisa Graham said it’s hard to speculate on the growing turtle numbers, but volunteers are making a big difference.

“Somebody said that maybe because all of our volunteers are so well trained now they are not missing many nests,” Graham said. “Usually there’s nests missed every year, but I don’t think we had any. Every year we’ll get calls that there’re turtles on the beach and it’ll be somewhere we didn’t have a nest so that’s a nest we missed. I don’t remember getting any of those calls last year.”

Volunteers are taught what to look for in a turtle crawl, a distinctive track made by the momma turtle.

For the training sessions, Reetz imitates the crawl by doing a short shuffling loop from the water’s edge up on the beach a few feet, then looping back to the water again.

In the middle of the track, she buries some ping pong balls and makes the sand in the area smooth like a momma turtle might before returning to the Gulf.

Volunteers, who are trained the proper techniques to remove the sand on nests prior to finding the crawl, are then brought to the nest sight to find eggs.

Sometimes the tracks may be hard to discern from coolers and the countless foot prints left by summer visitors.

“If you find something you are not sure if it’s really a turtle crawl and you just don’t really know, call anyway,” Reetz said. “I’d much rather get up out of bed and come look at ice chest tracks than to miss a turtle nest.

“There have been times when people will say ‘I don’t really think I’ve found one, but …’ and it turns out to be a turtle nest.”

Walking on the beach at sunrise presents another challenge to volunteers with the natural beauty distracting eyes from the sand.

“You don’t really need to get any phone calls unless its turtle related when you are walking the beach,” Graham said. “And I’m the world’s worse. Some volunteer will call me and I’ll just be walking and I’ll say ‘wait a minute.’ I’m not a real good multi-tasker.”

And Reetz warned volunteers not to get too excited if they find a crawl.

“If you find a crawl or a nest, don’t get hung up on just those tracks,” she said. “Call your team leader and continue your patrol. If you stop because you’ve found tracks and you don’t go any further you might miss another false crawl or another nest. We keep track of both.”