by Paul Sánchez-Navarro This past summer was expected to be a strong season for turtles, both loggerhead and green, along the Mexican Caribbean, and strong it was, but in storms that pounded beaches and destroyed turtle nests. Akumal’s beaches lost almost two-thirds of the nests that were laid before Emily hit in July, but the next day mothers were again arriving to lay eggs. There were nests hatching in September and October, until Hurricane Wilma began thrashing the beaches. After two hurricanes, it was difficult to keep track of the numbers of nests and hatchlings, especially as we lost all the stakes marking the remaining nests. However, we did know there were at least 51 loggerhead and 125 green turtle nests during the entire season, and about 1,135 loggerhead and 3,030 green hatchlings over the whole season.

And then, in a turtle season full of surprises, CEA friend Sherry Halas of Seattle stopped by our office a few days ago to report hatchlings emerging from a nest long after most of us had considered the season to be over. On Dec. 3 while walking along Jade Beach around 10 p.m., she found a group of perhaps 30 hatchlings, half of them disoriented and heading in the wrong direction. She immediately called her husband and friends, and set to work gathering the little ones that had wandered onto the lawn attracted by pool lights, and releasing them on the shore, a few feet from the water’s edge, so they could find their own way into the surf. Thank you Sherry, for helping these animals and for sharing your story with us!

CEA would like to thank everyone who helped protect the mother turtles coming ashore to nest and the babies going to sea, and who worked to make sure that Akumal’s beaches were in good shape to host the miraculous process of life that occurs in the nest. We also would like to call attention to residents and visitors who do not yet understand the role humans can play in keeping these species alive, and who continue to destroy the beaches by maintaining too much beach lighting during the nesting season or otherwise interfering with the reproductive process of the turtles. We invite you to join us in 2006 to make it a recovery year for these endangered species.