Fifth annual Turtle Watch fall fundraiser planned

The event has been renamed The Suzi Fox Turtle Watch Wednesday Event in honor of the organization’s late executive director.

BY LESLIE LAKE SUN CORRESPONDENT | llake@amisun.com

ANNA MARIA ISLAND – Plans are underway for the fifth annual major fundraiser for Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring.

The Wednesday, Nov. 8 event, formerly known as Turtle Watch Wednesday, will be renamed “The Suzi Fox Turtle Watch Wednesday Event” in honor of the organization’s late executive director, Suzi Fox, who died last year.

“The funds raised will help keep our group going, providing supplies for our beach patrols and supporting our outreach efforts, including printing of educational materials,” new Turtle Watch Executive Director Kristen Mazzarella said.

Turtle Watch supporters are asked to save the date as details are finalized, said event organizer Sharon Hoatland, of A Paradise Realty. The fundraiser includes food, drink, music and raffle and auction items.

WHERE'S SUZI?

For the second week in a row, loggerhead Suzi is maintaining her first-place lead in a field of 11 sea turtles in the Tour de Turtles race.

Suzi was outfitted with a satellite monitor after she nested on June 27 at Coquina Beach. She is participating in the Sea

A Day In The Life Of Turtle Watch

Every day when the sun comes up, five to seven Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring volunteers start the labor-intensive process of patrolling the beaches and waterlines of the Island and checking sea turtle nests.

“We start at sunrise and go until we are finished, which is sometimes as late as 11 a.m.,” Mazzarella said.

Walking along the waterline, volunteers look for new crawls – indicated by flipper marks – left behind by mother turtles.

“We determine if they are nests or false crawls and we mark the nest with yellow stakes and flagging tape,” Mazzarella said. “We also go up to every nest every day to see if anything has happened to the nest and are always excited when we see hatchling tracks coming from the nest going straight down to the water.”

There are 15-20 Turtle Watch volunteers who alternate patrolling the beach and checking nests over the season, which runs from May through October.

“We determine how many eggs were laid in each nest and the proportion of eggs that hatch. This tells us how success-

Turtle Conservancy’s Tour de Turtles race, Aug. 1 –Oct. 31.

Since the race began, Suzi has traveled 445 miles. After hugging the shoreline of Anna Maria Island in the Gulf of Mexico for the first several weeks, she swam off into open water and is now near the Yucatan Peninsula. She was named in honor of Suzi Fox, the late executive director of Anna found several nests that had been driven over or trampled on.

“We don’t know if any of the eggs were broken,” Mazzarella said at the time. “We’ll find that out later in the season.”

Now Mazzarella says that two of those nests had less than 50% hatch success.

TURTLE WATCH | SUBMITTED

ful the nest was and how many being put out in the population,” she said.

Volunteers can tell a nest has hatched when they see the tracks leading from the posted area. They determine the number of hatchlings that have been produced when they excavate a nest by counting the hatched eggshells.

“Many of us have not seen an adult turtle and only see hatchlings every once in a while when we find them as stragglers in a nest we are excavating or rescue them when they are disoriented and go towards the light of buildings and roads instead of the ocean,” she said.

In mid-July, volunteers on patrol

Wildlife Club and Waterline Marina and Resort.

“Two of the nests that were driven over had low hatch success. The others have not yet hatched or been excavated. It’s difficult to say whether the low hatch success is due to the compression of the nest or natural causes,” Mazzarella said.

Mazzarella reminded beachgoers to keep the beaches dark at night so as not to interfere with hatchlings’ trek to the water.

“We don’t go out at night on the beach to see sea turtles because we want to make sure the beach is a safe, dark place for them to nest without disturbance. We are happy to see the signs that they’ve been here when we patrol in the morning,” Mazzarella said, adding “If you do go out at night, please do not use flashlights or cell phones and please do not disturb nesting or hatching sea turtles.”

Nesting News

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Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring, which is sponsoring her race along with the Coastal

Suzi is swimming in the race to draw attention to the cause of light pollution and how lighting near shore can negatively impact nesting turtles and their hatchlings. Visit The Sun’s Facebook page for weekly updates in “Where’s Suzi?” and visit amisun.com for updates on sea turtle nesting activity in “Nesting News.”

Turtle nests laid: 401 (Record: 544 in 2019)

False crawls: 441 (Record: 831 in 2010

Nests hatched: 210 (Record: 453 in 2022)

Hatchlings hatched: 15,122 (Record: 35,850 in 2022)

Hatchling disorientations: 75