6 minute read
NEWS
4THE SUN ISLAND NEWS
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IN BRIEF
Elsa impacts sea turtle, shorebird nests
JOE HENDRICKS | SUN City officials seek additional public input on how to make the Pine Avenue corridor safer for motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists, golf cart users and others.
Reimagining Pine Avenue meetings continue
The next Reimagining Pine Avenue public information meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, July 20 at 6 p.m. at Anna Maria City Hall, 10005 Gulf Drive. The public is invited to share ideas for improving the business district’s main street, which ends at the Anna Maria City Pier.
Robert “Coop” Cooper died on Saturday, July 3.
SUBMITTED
In honor of the late Robert “Coop” Cooper, a memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, July 17, at the Harvey Memorial Church in Bradenton Beach. The church is located at 300 Church Ave. The memorial service will be followed by a “Coop da Loop” celebration of life at the Anchor Inn at 3007 Gulf Drive in Holmes Beach. Celebration of life attendees are encouraged to bring a dish to share if they wish.
Help keep Holmes Beach beautiful
Applications are open for two new members to join the Holmes Beach Parks and Beautification Committee. Members meet once a month from October through May to help design and maintain city parks and other green spaces throughout Holmes Beach. Members serve two-year terms on the dais with the committee, which also advises city commissioners on larger beautification projects. Applications can be found online at www. holmesbeachfl.org or by contacting the city clerk’s office at 941-708-5800. Anyone who is a resident of Holmes Beach is invited to apply. Once applications are received, members will be appointed by city commissioners during a regular meeting. Tropical Storm Elsa destroyed some sea turtle eggs and shorebird chicks last week, but the first turtle nest of 2021 has hatched.
BY CINDY LANE
SUN STAFF WRITER | clane@amisun.com
ANNA MARIA ISLAND – Tropical Storm Elsa washed over the Island on July 6 and 7, taking some shorebird eggs and chicks with it, and soaking some sea turtle nests in the sand, perhaps for too long.
But Suzi Fox, director of Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring, remains optimistic.
The first sea turtle nest of the season hatched last week, producing 77 hatchlings.
“Water came up over many nests,” she said. “Are we upset about it? No, it’s nature. Many of those nests will still hatch. Turtles and birds have been at this a lot longer than we have.”
Each June or July, a storm hits the Island, but nesting always resumes and sometimes picks up speed, she said.
With the recent beach renourishment, “Manatee County has done everything they could to have the best nesting beach in Florida,” Fox said. “We’re still going to get washovers. That’s why sea turtles nest up to three times a season.”
While about 25% of sea turtle nests on the Island were lost last week, “The girls are continuing to nest,” she said, including a rare green turtle that nested July 9, only the third green turtle so far this nesting season, which began on May 1. The rest of the turtle nests on the Island are loggerhead sea turtles.
Among the shorebirds, only least terns are nesting this year – no black skimmers, Fox said.
The storm surge on the Gulf of Mexico beaches inundated the least tern colony, she said. While all 120 bird parents survived, only two of 15 chicks survived.
“Now that the water has receded, the adults are back on new eggs,” she said, adding that five newly-hatched chicks have been documented since the storm.
Volunteers do the counting and nest identification, but numbers of volunteers are down from more than 100 to about 20 due to COVID-19, which caused Fox to decide last year to have a few volunteers use ATVs to monitor nests rather than have dozens walk sections of the beach, risking contact with curious beachgoers.
On an ATV, “They can find 20 nests in one day,” she said. “On a day of walking, they can find maybe one.”
Turtle nesting season ends Oct. 31. Bird nesting season is active through the end of August.
CINDY LANE | SUN This loggerhead sea turtle nest in Bradenton Beach – like many others during Tropical Storm Elsa – was washed over by high tides.
CINDY LANE | SUN This sea turtle egg, center, washed up in a canal in Bimini Bay after Tropical Storm Elsa passed over Anna Maria Island.
TURTLE TIPS
During sea turtle season, May 1 – Oct. 31, please follow these tips: • Turn off lights visible from the beach and close blinds from sundown to sunrise; lights confuse nesting sea turtles and may cause them to go back to sea and drop their eggs in the water, where they won’t hatch. Light can also attract hatchlings away from the water. • Don’t use flashlights, lanterns or camera flashes on the beach at night. • Remove all objects from the sand from sundown to sunrise; they can deter sea turtles from nesting and can disorient hatchlings. • Fill in the holes you dig in the sand and level sandcastles before leaving the beach; they can obstruct or trap nesting and hatching sea turtles, which cannot live long out of the water. • Don’t use wish lanterns or fireworks; they litter the beach and Gulf. • Do not trim trees and plants that shield the beach from lights. • Never touch a sea turtle; it’s the law. If you see people disturbing turtles, call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Wildlife Alert hotline at 888-404-FWCC (3922).
NESTING NEWS
Turtle nests laid: 320 (Record: 544 in 2019) False crawls: 399 Nests hatched: 1 Hatchlings hatched: 77 (Record: 35,788 in 2018) Nest disorientations: 8
Where’s Bortie?
SEA TURTLE CONSERVANCY | SUBMITTED
Loggerhead sea turtle Bortie took a look at Anna Maria Island as a potential nesting spot for the second time this turtle nesting season on July 8. She is thought to have nested near 35th Street in Holmes Beach on June 6, according to the Sea Turtle Conservancy, which is tracking her satellite tag. Bortie laid a nest in June 2018 on Coquina Beach (see the red star on the map), where she was tagged. She competed in the Conservancy’s 11th Annual Tour de Turtles in 2018, placing 10th out of 13 contestants with 351 logged miles. In the 1,100-plus days she’s been tagged, she has paddled more than 4,200 miles. Turtle nesting season began locally on May 1 and ends on Oct. 31. Please turn off or shield beachfront lights to keep nesting turtles from becoming disoriented!
