Chapter ONE SEA TURTLES AN EARLY WARNING Every year visitors to the southern coast of Florida might get lucky At night between May and October they might see big clumsy green sea turtles lumbering out of the water and onto the beach The turtles are an impressive sight with shells averaging 4 9 feet 1 5 m long The top shell or carapace is black on babies but changes color throughout life It eventually becomes shades of gray green brown or black
forming starburst or irregular patterns Every two to four years turtles mate offshore and the mothers swim to the beach where they build deep nest cavities above the high tide line They lay an average of 136 eggs During a season they might repeat this process two or three times laying more eggs every 12 to 14 days Scientists have monitored a 13 mile 21 km stretch of beach in southern Florida's Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge since the 1980s In the early days they counted fewer than 50 green sea turtle nests per year In 2015 they counted a record 12 026 nests According to Kate Mansfield assistant professor at the University of Central Florida It is a really remarkable recovery and reflects a perfect storm of conservation successes Why were there so few nests in the 1980s and what caused the impressive recovery of Florida's green sea turtles Volunteers use dark red lights to monitor green sea turtles at night These lights don't disrupt the turtles nesting habits as much as white light does
