THE TRIBUNE ; Turtles stuck on beach by Fort Pierce after Katrina...

Turtles stuck on beach by Fort Pierce after storm

THE TRIBUNE (Fort Pierce, Florida) 27 August 05 Turtles stuck on beach by Fort Pierce after Katrina (Derek Simmonsen)
Hutchinson Island: While Hurricane Katrina mostly bypassed the Treasure Coast, its side effects took a swipe at one group of local residents: baby sea turtles.
Between 100 and 200 hatchlings were found scattered in seaweed and sargassum on the beach near the Fort Pierce South Jetty on Friday morning, and volunteers spent the day helping collect them so they could be returned to the ocean later.
The turtles might have hatched on Wednesday or Thursday night and been caught in seaweed and pushed back to shore by heavy waves and wind, said Bob Ernest, president of Ecological Associates in Jensen Beach.
"They all looked like they hatched. They just came the natural way out of their nests and happened to do that at a bad time," he said.
In addition to the hatchlings, scientists also reported damage to sea turtle nests up and down the Treasure Coast, although the damage was not nearly as bad as what occurred during last year's hurricanes.
Local residents first noticed the hatchlings, evenly divided between loggerhead and green sea turtles, near the jetty early Friday morning. Krista Muccino, 16, came to the beach to surf with her friends when she saw one of the turtles.
"I said, 'Oh my God! There's a sea turtle,'" she said. "Then we were walking up and down and there's a million of them. They were everywhere."
Other beachgoers reportedly saw the turtles in different spots and alerted police. About a dozen people spent the day combing through tangles of seaweed and sargassum on the beach, battling rain, strong winds and heavy waves as they looked for surviving turtles.
Lisa Paylor, a receptionist with the Humane Society of St. Lucie County, was one of several volunteers from the office who came to help.
"They're all tangled up and meshed up in there," she said. "They can't crawl out."
The white-bottomed green turtles and slightly smaller, dark loggerheads were placed in buckets with sand, seaweed and a little water and taken to Ecological Associates, where scientists planned to hold them until they could be released back into the water. Workers hoped to send them out Friday night or sometime tonight, depending on weather conditions, Ernest said.
If not, they will be kept in a rehabilitation center and taken offshore to be returned to the wild. The green turtles are endangered and the loggerheads are threatened, Ernest said.
Ernest said the turtles likely came out of about two or three nests on Hutchinson Island.
"If these folks hadn't started collecting them, they would have perished in the sun," he said.
The jetty was the only area that saw hatchlings beach, mainly because the currents in the area helped push seaweed onto the shore there, said Erik Martin, scientific director for Ecological Associates.
In addition to the hatched turtles, the storm also hurt sea turtle nests at various locations on Hutchinson and Jupiter islands. Based on the nesting surveys they conduct, scientists estimated about 200 loggerhead nests, three green turtle nests and three leatherback turtle nests were destroyed, Martin said.
That was minimal compared to the amount of damage that last fall's hurricanes did to the nests, when about 75 percent of the green turtle nests were destroyed and 25 to 30 percent of loggerhead nests were damaged, Martin said. Katrina destroyed about 5 percent of the loggerhead nests and about 1 percent of the green turtle nests in the area.
"Percentage-wise, that's not bad for having gone through a storm that's passed pretty close by," Martin said. "It's certainly something the turtles could recover from."
Additionally, some sea turtle eggs might be ruined by saltwater brought in by higher tides and heavy wave action, Martin said. Normal amounts of saltwater seeping into the ground doesn't damage the nests, but the extra water from the storms can stop development of the eggs.
"There is a potential that the effects of the storm will go beyond what we've seen," he said.
It was not clear whether there was any difference between nest damage reported in renourished beach areas and natural beaches, Martin said. St. Lucie County Erosion District Manager Richard Bouchard said the beach fared well after the storm, although there was some drop-off in the Fort Pierce area around the jetty.
Elsewhere in the region, 29 adult loggerhead turtles were released Friday morning at Sebastian Inlet State Park in Melbourne Beach by the Florida Park Service and National Marine Fisheries Service. The 4-year-old turtles were part of the Turtle Excluder Device program, which tested commercial fishing equipment fitted with devices that allow turtles to pass through nets while still trapping small animals, like shrimp.
The Indian River Lagoon was an ideal location for the release, because it allows the turtles access to the Atlantic Ocean for migration, according to the park service.
http://www.tcpalm.com/tcp/local_news/article/0,2545,TCP_16736_4032314,00.html