Mike Salisbury, UR - Sea Turtles and Beach Driving

Click here to view this week's article

This week’s article discusses human activity on the beach and its effects on sea turtles. The article

begins by listing a few ways humans impact sea turtles and their nests. Night-time human activity,

This is why it is important to remove beach furniture from the beach  

beach furniture and other recreational equipment (e.g., canoes, small boats and beach cycles, etc.) are the first few that are discussed. Eventually beach driving is brought up. Some of the negative repercussions of beach driving mentioned in the article are as follows: tire ruts extend the time it takes for hatchlings to reach the sea, sand compaction above nests lowers nest success, erosion, and night driving disturbs nesting females and disorients/crushes hatchlings. The article concludes with a few solutions and implies that beach driving negatively effects sea turtles.

After witnessing some very soft sand and deep ruts from tires in New Smyrna earlier this month; I agree that cars have no business on a nesting beach. Cue dramatic music, dun-dun-duuuun! I think we should be realistic about this issue though; putting an end to beach driving in Volusia County would be difficult. No driving on the beach during peak nesting months would be a good start. There has to be a compromise here, any ideas?

Getting past tire tracks/ruts is quite a feat for hatchlings 

As mentioned in this week’s article, there are a few things we can do in the meantime:

• Don't drive on sea turtle nesting beaches                                                                              
• Make sure to fill in any holes you dig while visiting the beach                                       
• Remove any beach chairs, beach umbrellas, boats, or other beach furniture each evening
• Avoid disturbing marked sea turtle nests, and take your trash with when you leave the beach

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Comments from last week:

Deb 'n Paul

Great post! I like that you provided the link to your article--good thinking! Also a question--who said that raking the beach makes life easier for baby sea turtles venturing out for their first time? I'm just thinking here but--I would think that in the natural world, baby sea turtles have to make due with all sorts of environments and I would also wonder if the sargassum offers them a sort of protection from predators (?)

I thought the same thing! Or at least it would fall in the same category as raking/smoothing the beach and not be allowed. On September 8^th I witnessed a Volusia County worker (dubbed Bob the Turtle Man) smoothing out the sand in front of a turtle nest using a similar setup to the one mentioned last week. I interviewed him after he smoothed the sand. Here is a quote from Bob I wrote in my field notebook, “It’s hatching season, smoothing out the sand makes things easier on these guys if they decide to hatch tonight.” Spoiled sea turtles I suppose, but they need all the help they can get.

This article mentions sargassum being used as protection from predators. It doesn't discuss sea turtles, but I would imagine it would be a great shelter for them.  I should mention Bob the Turtle Man was not removing any sargassum.

Other questions...is this soft sand problem seasonal? i.e., are tides/wave action generally higher in the winter than summer?

It seems like a year-round issue, I think it would be more common in the winter because there is more surf.  Although, a summer beach is generally broader than a winter beach, so the sand has more time to dry in the summer. Overall, it depends on the sea conditions at the time (tides, waves, etc.).   

After completing your first post--what do you think your interest is leading you on this topic?

I’m excited about this project! I have learned that beach driving is a broad and controversial topic. Living near a driving beach and witnessing the chaos really fuels my passion. I am considering the effects of beach driving on sea turtles, but this is a tentative idea.

Angela Boney

Did you use any kind of tools to measure the 20ft by 10ft and 1ft deep or did you estimate these numbers? If you estimated these measurements, what kind of tools would you need to get accurate numbers if you continue this research?

I did not use any tools for my measurements this time. In the future, I would use a good old-fashioned tape measure for accurate data.