The Uphill Struggle of the Loggerhead Sea Turtle

The struggle for survival continues for one of Georgia's most fragile and endangered species: the loggerhead sea turtle.  The Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Wildlife Resources Division, have recorded 1,219 nests on the state's 13 major barrier islands for the 2005 season.  The female loggerhead comes ashore to nest May through September.  Nests are marked and often protected with screens to help reduce predation of the eggs.  Hatchlings occur 60 days later and the young turtles scramble to sea.  Adult female loggerheads nest every second or third year.

Mark Dodd, WRD Wildlife Biologist and Coordinator for the Georgia Sea Turtle Program, is encouraged by the strong numbers of loggerhead nests this year, but "we are still below where we want to be."  The total number of nest in 2004 was 368, while in 2003 the nests numbered 1,480.  Over the last 30 years, the overall trend in Georgia shows a decline of 1.5 percent annually.  The goal is to reach 2,000 nests per year over a 25 year period.

Cumberland Island, Georgia's southernmost barrier island, documented the most loggerhead nests this year at 230. Each nest has about 100 eggs. Out of the one hundred eggs, only a handful ever actually reaches maturity. The turtle is a type of creature which produces lots of babies and leaves them to fend for themselves—as opposed to other creatures, like horses, who have a small number of babies and tend and protect them until maturity. This method obviously serves loggerhead turtles well, because they have been around since the time of the dinosaurs. However, in the presence of an active threat such as Cumberland’s wild hogs, the low survival rate of turtle hatchlings places the species at risk. A loggerhead’s typical life span is 50-60 years.