This year’s hurricane season for the Atlantic is ending at the end of the month, and already the light impact to the mainland U.S. seems to have had a positive impact on sea turtle hatchlings.
According to the Southern Farm Network only two tropical storms impacted the mainland U.S. this year, and no hurricanes made landfall. At the same time, several conservation groups reported increased sea turtle hatchlings.
Preliminary nesting numbers from Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring indicate that 544 total nests, 424 hatched nests, 827 “false crawls” (when turtles come ashore but do not lay eggs) and nearly 31,000 hatchlings produced. There were also upwards of 3,951 disoriented hatchlings reported. That happens when the turtles become confused by artificial lights, since they typically rely on moonlight to find the water.
Data from the Clearwater Marine Aquarium cited by WUSF and Catalyst show that a record-breaking 405 nests and 613 false crawls were noticed from April through October on a 21-mile stretch of beach in Pinellas County. Those are the highest numbers reported there in decades. There was a more modest increase last year, when CMA documented 271 nests compared to 227 nests in 2023.
“It is either that our conservation efforts are working and obviously making a difference. Therefore, there are more turtles to lay more nests,” explained CMA’s Sea Turtle Conservation Program manager Carly Oakley, according to Catalyst. “Or other areas might have been more negatively impacted by the 2024 hurricanes so the turtles had to find somewhere else to nest.”
Sea turtles are vulnerable to hurricane destruction that can wash them back physically, change their habitats and more, per the Sea Turtle Preservation Society. Last year, a devastating Atlantic hurricane season destroyed sand dunes and tall grass near Anna Maria Island and allowed artificial light to flood the beach, WUSF said.
Generally, the last named storm of hurricane season in the Atlantic forms on Nov. 19 and the last hurricane develops on Nov. 15. That indicates that the season is indeed coming to a close on time this year. Though there were no big landfalls that impacted the U.S., Forbes noted that this hurricane season did produce 13 named storms, three of which reached Category 5, and that Hurricane Melissa, which made landfall in Jamaica this October, “will go down in history as one of the strongest storms on record to make landfall in the Atlantic Basin.”