Florida is home to over 100,000 sea turtle nests every year, and, with various species under threat, every nesting season conservationists push to make the environment around them safer.
Now, after years of community education, research and conservation efforts, there might be reason for cautious optimism.
Population rates for some sea turtle species have been strengthening in recent years, including the once internationally endangered green sea turtle.
Justin Perrault, the vice president of research at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center, said: “We did have a record year of leatherback nesting last year in the state of Florida and this year they are starting very strong.”
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The International Union for Conservation of Nature down listed the green sea turtle from “endangered” to “least concern" in 2025 because of a global increase of their population. However, in the United States, multiple green sea turtle populations are still considered endangered under the endangered species act as well as under Florida state law.
“ One of the issues with sea turtle conservation is it takes decades before you see changes because of their long lifespan,” Perrault explained. “Oftentimes you might see a population crash and you won't know if your conservation efforts are working for 10 or 20 years, maybe more.”
He said that the change in the green sea turtle’s international status is certainly a sign that conservation efforts are working, while in Florida the three main species of sea turtles — loggerhead, leatherback and green — have started to increase in population.
“ These standardized nest monitoring that we do here in Florida, protecting the beaches, protecting those nests… that is working,” he said.
“We're making sure more hatchlings get to the ocean. We're making sure people are not accidentally damaging sea turtle nests when they're out on the beaches. All of those efforts are successful and we're seeing that as all three of the species in Florida, at least over the last 20 or 30 years, have started to increase.”
Those turtles don’t only need to hatch from their nests, they need to live long enough to come back and nest decades later. That is where moves like changing lights near the coast to amber or red so that baby sea turtles don’t get confused, or putting turtle excluder devices on shrimp trawls so turtles don’t get caught and drown come in.
Bette Zirkelbach, the general manager of the Turtle Hospital in Marathon, sees on the local level how helpful ongoing education can be in the fight to conserve marine life, as more people "know what a sick turtle looks like."
"So six out of 10 of our rescue calls now come from people that have been through our educational program," Zirkelbach said.
Human activity is to blame for many of the cases that come into the Turtle Hospital, including the case of a loggerhead named Molly that came in with a 10-lb tumor that was putting her life in danger.
After multiple surgeries and a few months of rehab, Molly was released with a satellite tag in November 2025.
Zirkelbach said the disease that caused Molly's tumor — fibropapillomatosis — is only found in sea turtles that spend time around developed islands.
“ Pretty much tells you everything you need to know,” she said. “In areas where there's not human development, we don't see the disease. So the thought is the species that it affects most are the green sea turtles, which are herbivores. They feed primarily on sea grass and algae close to shore… there's definitely a correlation to water quality and the proximity to land and this disease.”
Molly’s survival of such a brutal disease is an example to Zirkelbach that caring about the environment is not hopeless. “ The storytelling with a turtle like Molly, a success story, can help people to care about their environments,” she said.
The battle continues
Nesting season tends to begin around March, but each species lay their eggs at different times. This year, researchers with the Loggerhead Marinelife Center found their first leatherback sea turtle nest laid on Feb. 11 in Juno Beach, while the first loggerhead turtle nest was found on April 3 — both on the early side.
Experts think it's a reflection of a warming climate — a danger for turtle populations — but it also shows how turtles can adapt.
Since it has been getting hotter earlier in the year recently, sea turtles could be nesting earlier to compensate. Heat can lead to embryonic mortality in nests. To adjust even further in the future, Perrault said, they could begin nesting further north.
“ Whatever environmental triggers are happening in the environment that's giving them that cue to migrate is happening earlier and it's likely because of our warming oceans,” Perrault said.
Florida’s abundant sea reptiles don’t only respond to weather changes to determine when to migrate, but their gender is actually determined by the temperature of the sand. This is called temperature dependent sex determination — warmer temperatures will produce females and cooler sands produce males.
“ Here in the state of Florida, it's very warm and so we have a lot of production of females,” Perrault explained.
As sea turtles attempt to adjust on their own, researchers continue to study their nesting habits to see if there are more effective ways they can help increase healthy and gender-diverse hatching rates.
“I always say ‘conservation is a compromise between what humans want and what the environment needs,’” Perrault said.
Changing the colors of lights near the coast, slowing down in areas where sea turtles might be gathering and keeping an eye out for a sea turtle that might need help may seem like small things but these researchers and conservationists are seeing the results in big ways.
Sea turtles have been around since the dinosaurs and they are not unfamiliar with nature’s changes. But human intervention is speeding up climate changes like warming oceans, rising sea levels and possibly increasing rates of diseases like fibropapillomatosis. This is where human conservation and research is important because sea turtles can't always adapt fast enough on their own.
“ Sea turtles are a keystone species,” Zirkelbach said. “They've been on our planet over 110 million years, so that really hits me hard. We certainly in our lifetime as humans don't wanna see something go extinct that has survived our oceans for so long.”
As sea turtle nesting season ramps up, hatching will reach its peak in late June. Conservationists now continue their work so maybe some of the sea turtles they help reach the ocean this year will come back 20 to 30 years from now for another even more successful nesting season.
