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Marked Nest
WHO: Each morning volunteers from the Coastal Wildlife Club Turtle Patrol arrive to walk the beach looking for tracks, determining if and where the female turtles nested, counting, and recording data.
WHERE: Nesting areas on the beaches from Caspersen Beach in Venice southward along Manasota Key including Stump Pass State Park are monitored from April 15 throughout the annual season until the end of October and even into November for later nests. In 2025 Coastal Wildlife Club is extending its monitoring area southward along Knight and Don Pedro Islands to the northern end of Don Pedro State Park.
WHY: Nests are marked to allow beachgoers to easily avoid the nest area and to help the patrol check each nest each morning to look for signs of predators digging, washing over or hatching. Marking the nest helps people understand that sea turtles are protected species and that the beach is an important nesting habitat.
Counting nests is not the same as counting turtles
The number of female turtles is smaller than the number of nests and each species may lay a different number of nests each season.
Seeing lots of marked nests may cause beachgoers to think that counting the nests will tell them how many turtles are laying eggs here.
Adult turtles migrate back to their nesting beaches during the summer to lay their eggs, but don’t usually nest every year. They make about three to six nests at two-week intervals and then leave to go off to rest, feed and restore body nutrients.
Patrol Volunteers
Monitoring and reporting data is part of one of the largest Citizen Science programs. Every volunteer is listed as authorized personnel on permits issued by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission.
The way the nest is marked may be different on various parts of our local beaches. All nests are marked following standardized protocols established by the federal, state, and local governments. See www.coastalwildlifeclub.org/sea-turtle-patrol for volunteering expectations.