“From Spain in the west to Cyprus in the east, the Mediterranean has witnessed a record rise in sea turtle nesting,” a comeback for an “ancient mariner that not that long ago was on the verge of extinction. Only one in 1,000 turtle hatchlings makes it to adulthood, making the turnaround even more remarkable. In Greece, which hosts 60% of” loggerhead sea turtles nests, “the rebound has been phenomenal: from an average of 5,000 to 7,000 nests per year, since 2023 over 10,000 nests have been recorded annually,” reports The Guardian.
More than 1,200 sea turtle nests were visible just on the Greek beach of Sekania — one turtle nest for every 20 inches! A plethora of turtles. In Greece as a whole, “the rebound has been phenomenal.” One of the oldest surviving species of animal, sea turtles have existed for more than 100 million years. “Although highly migratory – over a lifetime, the reptiles cross thousands of miles of seas and oceans – female turtles always return as mature adults, about 20 to 25 years later, to the habitat where they were born to lay eggs.”
In Brazil, a nasty tumor that kills sea turtles is diminishing.
Sea turtles have also made a comeback in Florida, although Hurricane Idalia wiped out some turtle nests in southwest Florida last year. This year, sea turtles have been “been packing southwest Florida beaches with nests.” “Thousands of sea turtle hatchlings” have been “emerging from the sand and shuffling toward the ocean around Florida,” including 40 “leatherbacks from a Sanibel Island clutch laid by their mammoth mama on April 24. The rare and endangered leatherback can grow to seven feet and weigh a ton, making it the world’s largest species of sea turtle.”
“Fish and wildlife officials were thrilled last summer when nesting totals broke several records, including 133,941 loggerhead nests and 76,543 green turtle nests statewide in September, which surpassed the records from 2016 and 2017, respectively.” But in southwest Florida, over a thousand nests were wiped out when “Hurricane Idalia’s brush-by sent storm surge washing over the beach for hours,” devastating nests on Sanibel and Captiva islands.
While the entire state is seeing a record number of sea turtle nests this season, the numbers have tripled since last year in Space Coast, Florida, a 72-mile span of beach on Florida’s central east coast near Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral…
So far in 2023, Space Coast, has recorded a whopping 20,545 in loggerhead nests, 31,893 green sea turtle nests, 61 leatherback nests and three Kemp’s Ridley nests, with a total count of more than 52,500 nests in that area alone…At one point over the summer, the region was seeing more than 300 nests pop up a night…Green turtles have seen the largest increases out of the species that nest in Florida…The Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge saw a 195% increase in green sea turtles, one of the most threatened species of turtles. By July 21, researchers counted 13,683 green turtle nests at the preserve, compared to 4,638 nests during the same time last year, according to the organizations….The entire state is seeing massive increases in turtle nests…There have been 212,000 sea turtle nests recorded around the state, and the nesting season is not over yet…Last year, the state saw 151,000 turtle nests.
Fish species rebounded off the coast of California due to their young finding a sanctuary in abandoned oil rigs. According to study,
the rigs were some of the most “productive” ocean habitats in the world…The research showed the rigs to be about 27 times more productive than the natural rocky reefs in California….Subsequent studies showed that some species of rockfish produce 10 to 100 times more eggs and larvae at these platforms than at natural reefs….In some cases, the platforms are actually important to the populations of fish as a whole…in the slow-growing rockfish bocaccio, a commercially important but overfished species, the rigs were home to one-fifth of the average number of juvenile fish that survive each year…
