Loggerhead sea turtles keep declining in numbers

NEW SMYRNA BEACH - Found deep in the bottom of their nest, the 13 loggerhead sea turtles had just hatched from their eggs, so fresh they still had the yolk sac attached to their bellies.
Amber Bridges, a field biologist in Volusia's sea-turtle program, kept them for a day, rather than let them head out prematurely.
The next night, she waited until a flock of pelicans flew away, then released the 2-inch-long turtles on the beach, sending them off to their new lives at sea.
These young sea turtles, released nine days ago, are among the last hatchlings of a nesting season that ended with mixed outcomes.
Green and leatherback sea turtles, both endangered species, had a record-high nest count, continuing an upward climb in the tallies.
But loggerhead sea turtles, the only sea turtle in Florida not classified as endangered, had a dismal season. Wildlife officials said this year's count of 28,074 was the lowest ever reported for Florida's core nesting beaches since the state started detailed monitoring in 1989. It continues a downward spiral that has many turtle experts concerned.
The poor season might fuel one effort by environmentalists to have these loggerhead turtles, the group that nests from North Carolina to Florida, reclassified from threatened to endangered.
"It's a sign the loggerheads are in trouble," said Elizabeth Griffin, a marine wildlife scientist with Oceana, one of the environmental groups that petitioned the federal government last week to have this group of loggerhead turtles reclassified. "We're seeing a significant decline, and we need to make an effort to turn it around."
Some experts aren't sure loggerheads should be reclassified yet, though many link the nesting decline to turtle deaths from long-line fisheries.
Conservation efforts on Florida beaches have helped sea turtles make a comeback, after they faced an extinction risk from human harvesting of their eggs. Nests are monitored and coastal counties restrict beachfront lighting, which can disorient the egg-laying females and the hatchlings.
Those efforts have paid off for green and leatherback sea turtles, which are now nesting in numbers higher than during the 1990s.
"We've been conserving turtles very hard for three decades," said Blair Witherington, a research scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, an arm of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "With all this effort, time and money spent, we would expect those populations to be increasing."
Loggerheads enjoyed an upward swing in their nesting tallies during the 1990s, peaking in 1998 with nearly 60,000 nests on Florida's core beaches. However, during the past decade, the nesting has dropped off nearly 50 percent.
This year's season shows a continued decline, including at Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge in Brevard County, the state's top loggerhead-nesting beach. The refuge had its lowest nest number ever recorded, 6,405 loggerhead nests, said Lew Ehrhart, a senior research fellow at Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute.
Volusia beaches offered one of the few bright points to the loggerhead season, with 503 loggerhead nests this year -- a record for the county. "It may just be an anomaly," said Bob Ernest, president of Ecological Associates, Volusia's turtle-consulting firm.
Some biologists think loggerheads are in decline because of a threat that affects them more than the other species: high mortality from long-line fisheries.
Fisheries officials already know thousands of loggerhead turtles have been killed by long-line hooks meant to catch shark, tuna and swordfish.
New rules on the types of hooks used have reduced deaths.
However, those rules may have been too late to save some juvenile turtles, which would be nesting in Florida by now. Witherington noted that long-line fisheries intersect with migration patterns for loggerheads, but not for green sea turtles.
Other fisheries also may be contributing to the toll, including trawling, especially since the trawls have only recently been readjusted with larger "escape" hatches to prevent larger loggerhead sea turtles from drowning in the nets.
Federal officials must prevent other loggerhead deaths not addressed in the regulations, Griffin said. For example, she said, the trawl nets for the summer flounder fisheries don't include the larger escape hatches.
It will take several months before any action is taken on the petition to reclassify the loggerhead sea turtle.
Ehrhart is more cautious about linking fisheries deaths and nesting drop-offs.
"I am concerned about the trend, but I'm not ready to say the sky is falling," he said. "We have to be careful about using the phrase 'steep and serious decline' when we still have 30,000 to 40,000 nests in Florida."
He adds that some of his research, which involves tracking the young loggerheads as they feed in Indian River Lagoon, doesn't show a decline in the numbers, and that some of the trawling done to track loggerhead numbers reflects the same.
"We are concerned, we need to be vigilant, and we need to study it as thoroughly as we can," Ehrhart said. "There could be a whole lot of reasons to this, including natural ones. We need to be objective."