Tyndall remains longtime home to sea turtles

8/2/2002 - TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AFPN) -- It is a cycle as old as time: loggerhead sea turtles returning to lay their eggs on the beaches here.

In 1983, the year Tyndall AFB began an active effort to protect the reptiles, there were only seven nests on the base's beaches. In 1998 there were 99, and so far this year, there are 45 nests.

"The increase in nests is caused by large-scale efforts to protect sea turtles," said Dr. Jack Mobley, the 325th Civil Engineer Squadron's wildlife biologist. "More turtles in the water equals more turtles on Tyndall's beaches."

Protecting the turtles and boosting their survivability is the goal.

"Because we're good stewards of our resources, it is important to do everything we can to protect these endangered species," said Bob Bates, chief of natural resources, of the base's efforts.

The 325th CES's environmental flight runs a program designed to protect the sea turtle eggs. The eggs are vulnerable to several factors, including human disruption; predators such as ghost crabs, raccoons, coyotes and armadillo; and "strandings," a condition that occurs when new hatchlings move toward lights on shore rather than the waters of the ocean.

The natural resources element of the environmental flight checks all 43 miles of Tyndall shoreline every day for what they refer to as a "crawl," the markings left on the sand from the large turtles coming ashore. Once they find a crawl, the search team checks for a nest by sticking their fingers into the sand to find the tops of eggs. If a nest of eggs is found, "we put a cage on it," said Dr. Mobley. The cage is designed to keep predators out.

Turtles reach sexual maturity from about 20 to 25 years of age, and they have a tendency to return to the area they were hatched to lay their eggs.

Once the eggs are buried in the sand and protected by the cage, the sand acts as a natural incubator. The eggs are very sensitive to temperature. A temperature change as small as 2 degrees can drastically change the time an egg takes to hatch. A normal loggerhead egg takes about 50 days to incubate. The same egg could take as long as 80 days if the temperature is cooler than normal.

This year is a slightly down year for nests compared to others in the recent past. The last time Tyndall had less than 50 nests in a season was 1995. Mobley said there is no explanation for the fluctuation. (Courtesy of Air Education and Training Command News Service)