Turtles given helping hand (with video and photo gallery)

ANNA MARIA ISLAND — A distinct track in the sand, some dug-up plants and possibly a clutch of eggs are the only signs of a mother turtle’s nocturnal visit to the beach.

But at sunrise twice a week, Tom and Lois Huntington pull on their Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch T-shirts and search for these markings by the pink glow of early morning.

From late spring to mid-fall, about 70 volunteers take turns searching Anna Maria Island’s Gulf side beaches for turtle nests: marking them off, logging data and protecting them. The information is used to protect the turtle’s nesting grounds from development and misuse that might further harm these already-endangered species.

Statewide in 2009, 2,748 people helped in some way to monitor the 800 miles of turtle-nesting beaches along Florida’s coast. All of it is covered on foot or by all-terrain vehicle every morning from March to October, says Anne Meylan, a research administrator for Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

This group includes some government and military employees, but it is largely made up of volunteer citizens.

“It’s a partnership,” Meylan said. “If it didn’t exist, then collecting all of this data would be impossible.”

As of Friday, volunteers had found 130 turtle nests on the island this season, and so far almost 1,100 baby turtles had hatched and made their way to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Huntingtons first learned of AMI Turtle Watch on a family vacation when their son John, then 9 or 10, met Suzie Fox, the head coordinator of the Anna Maria program.

They were on the beach, and Fox told the boy all about sea turtles, and John told her about his lake turtles — which came on vacation with the Huntingtons from Brandon.

“He dragged Suzie to our house to show her his turtles, and we’ve just been interested in it ever since,” Lois Huntington said.

John, now 24, has moved to New York, and his parents have retired to Anna Maria Island, allowing them to become involved full-time three years ago as early-morning beach walkers.

When searching for nests at daybreak, conditions are always different.

Sometimes high tide forces them to trudge through the beach’s soft sand, while low tides offer a stretch of packed sand. Every so often a pod of dolphins can be seen in the surf, hunting breakfast, and morning joggers are a common sight.

“The sea’s usually very calm and it’s very beautiful, and I’m always surprised by the number of people who are out on the beach in the morning,” Lois Huntington said.

The Huntingtons search for a single long track, made as the mother turtle drags herself across the shore with flippers meant for swimming. The track stretches from the water’s edge, up onto the beach and then back down into the water. So far this summer, they’ve found four nests.

Turtle species are easily identifiable by their tracks, with the irregular, swooshing tread of a loggerhead’s trail being by far the most common. Green turtles and leatherbacks are a possibility, but are rare.