Conservancy of SW Florida Keewaydin Island Turtle Tracking Project

A project of Conservancy of SW Florida Keewaydin Island Turtle Tracking Project in conjunction with the partners and sponsors detailed below.

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Introduction

The Conservancy of Southwest Florida began in 1964 when community leaders came together to defeat a proposed “Road to Nowhere” and spearheaded the acquisition and protection of Rookery Bay. The Conservancy is a grassroots organization focused on the critical environmental issues of the Southwest Florida region.

Partnering with like-minded organizations, the Conservancy works to manage growth and protect area waters, land and wildlife. The Conservancy of Southwest Florida does this through the combined, multi-disciplinary efforts of environmental education, policy and advocacy and environmental science and research. Additionally, the Conservancy Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic treats more than 2,400 injured, sick and orphaned animals each year and releases about half back into their native habitats.

The Conservancy of Southwest Florida and Conservancy Nature Center are located in Naples, Florida at 1450 Merrihue Drive, off Goodlette-Frank Road at 14th Avenue North. For information about the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, call 239-262-0304 or www.conservancy.org.

ABOUT THE CONSERVANCY SEA TURTLE MONITORING PROJECT: The Conservancy of Southwest Florida has been monitoring sea turtle nesting activity on Keewaydin Island since 1982. Keewaydin Island is an un-bridged, primary barrier island located in Collier County, near Naples, Florida. It is approximately 12 km in length and contains relatively few permanent residents and several weekend homes. This is particularly the case during the summer months.

The State of Florida owns approximately 85% of the island. These lands are included in the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (RBNERR.) The southern 7.2 km of the island are monitored every night between May 15 and August 15. Over the years, Conservancy sea turtle researches have collected data on approximately 1,204 individual turtles, 4,047 nests and recorded 210,300 hatchlings as having successfully entered the Gulf of Mexico. The majority of these nests and hatchling were loggerheads. However, 13 of the nests were from green turtles, resulting in 1,114 green turtle hatchlings reaching the Gulf.

The sea turtle beach monitoring program is multifaceted. It involves monitoring sea turtle nesting activity and reproductive success; preventing nest depredation by resident wildlife, principally raccoons, and most recently feral hogs.

Aside from simply protecting nests, the night work has also made it possible to develop an extensive database on the turtles which nest on Keewaydin. Sea turtles typically return to the same beaches to nest, so tagging has made it possible to document both in-season and out-of-season returns by individual turtles. Though loggerheads typically nest four to five times in a season, several have nested seven times.

Tagging data is slowly helping us gain insight into lives of these remarkable animals. The project is also one of 27 beaches throughout Florida that are part of the statewide Index Nesting Beach Survey.

In 2009, thanks to donations from concerned private individuals, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida was able to introduce satellite tagging as an enhancement to our sea turtles research, moving our research collection from the shore to the open water, tracking turtles as they migrate throughout the year before returning to nest. Satellite tagging allows us to non-evasively place a transmitter on a nesting turtle to track movement throughout their life cycle and record and analyze the data to assimilate behavior.

The information gained from a comprehensive view of a loggerhead sea turtle will allow us to better understand and protect these remarkable creatures.

Project Partners

This satellite tracking project is in collaboration with Dr. Kate Mansfield (National Marine Fisheries Service, Southeast Fisheries Science Center)and Katrina Phillips (University of Miami, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science).

Project Sponsors

This project was made possible by the generous support of private individuals, including:

Ruth and Don Campbell

John and Donna Hall

Kate Mansfield

David DuPont

Nick Penniman

Patsy Schroeder

Lanny and Holly Sherwin

Christopher B. and Jeannie Smith

David B. and Vicky Smith

Pamela Williams

Many thanks to you all!

• The presentation of data here does not constitute publication. All data remain copyright of the project partners. Maps or data on this website may not be used or referenced without explicit written consent.
• For more information please visit the project website.
• If you have questions or would like to request the use of maps or data for this project please contact kate.mansfield@gmail.com,davea@conservancy.org.

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