Turtle Nesting Season!

So we’re getting close to the end of the 2017 turtle nesting season over here and I have to say that this year’s season has been phenomenal! So many turtles!

I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but it seemed like the turtles were showing up a little later than they did the last three years. First the big male Loggerheads started showing up, followed by the females. After mating the males took off to wherever they wanted to go and the females stuck around to lay their eggs on the beaches along the Jupiter/Juno/Palm Beach coast.

Slowly but surely we started seeing more and more females resting on top or underneath the main ledge off of Jupiter. Some of them wouldn’t show us more that their butt, sticking out from underneath the ledge, while others would rest on top hidden in between the soft corals that grow on top of the ledge. When the number of turtles started to increase it was time to start counting. Just to see how many turtles I would actually see during the dive. I’ll put tags on my slate so I’ll have an accurate number by the time I surface. My previous record of the number of turtles that I’d seen during one dive was 39, set in 2015. Last year I saw a lot, but not as many as the year before and most definitely not as many as I did this year. A few weeks ago we were drifting along the ledge at the dive site Loggerhead and I counted 52 turtles during the dive. No, that’s not a typo. I counted 52 turtles in ONE dive, UNREAL! They were literally everywhere, so cool. Not all of them where Loggerheads though, the exact count was 49 Loggerheads, 1 Hawksbill and 2 Green turtles, making a total of 52!

I think turtle nesting season is my favorite time of the year to be under the water. I’ve seen so many turtles during my dives, but still every time I see one I get a smile on my face and I’ll feel the need to swim over to check it out. They’re such amazing animals!

-Anne