{"id":369661,"date":"2026-08-12T20:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T20:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/369661\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T20:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T20:04:09","slug":"record-1178-sea-turtle-nests-on-sanibel-and-captiva-face-big-threats-lee-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/369661\/","title":{"rendered":"Record 1,178 sea turtle nests on Sanibel and Captiva face big threats | Lee County"},"content":{"rendered":"

SANIBEL, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 The Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation<\/a> says this is a record-breaking season for loggerhead nesting on Sanibel and Captiva.<\/p>\n

So far, Sanibel has 935 sea turtle nests, including 922 loggerhead nests. Captiva has another 243 nests.<\/p>\n

That’s 1,178 nests between the two islands. More nests don’t necessarily mean more baby turtles.<\/p>\n

Every nest still has to make it to hatch day. Baby sea turtles face a lot of challenges from egg to hatch day and finally making it to the water.<\/p>\n

Temperature shifts and physical destruction are big ones. Coyotes have already depredated more than one in five Sanibel nests and about one in three on Captiva<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"first<\/p>\n

(Credit: Collier County Government)<\/p>\n

Storms and high tides have washed nearly 100 nests. Matt DePaolis with SCCF said the record numbers are encouraging, but they’re only the beginning.<\/p>\n

“Once the baby turtles hatch, we need to make sure those hatchlings can make it into the water,” DePaolis said.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Coyotes destroying sea turtle nests on Sanibel at alarming rate<\/a><\/p>\n

“Some hatchings have already occurred. We’re waiting on the next few, and it’s going to be this continual process until hopefully we have a bunch of baby turtles out in the ocean,” DePaolis said. “We continue to monitor. We collect the data, and this data is really important going forward.”<\/p>\n

Nesting season runs through Oct. 31. DePaolis said protecting these turtles isn’t just about protecting the nests\u2014it’s about protecting the habitat they need to survive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANIBEL, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 The Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation says this is a record-breaking season for loggerhead nesting on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,3788,15471,24443,4748],"class_list":["post-369661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-captiva-island","tag-sanibel","tag-sanibel-captiva-conservation-foundation","tag-sea-turtle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}