On the morning of August 12, Longboat Key Turtle Watch volunteers found about a dozen dead sea turtle hatchlings near Gulf of Mexico Drive. The same morning, 55 dead hatchlings turned up on Anna Maria Island. Some of the survivors from the Longboat Key nest were taken in for rehabilitation. The cause, according to the people who patrol that stretch of sand every day, traced back to light. Somewhere along that beach, something bright enough to compete with the horizon pulled hatchlings the wrong direction before they ever reached the water.
If you live on the south end of the island, that story is not background noise. It happened close enough to matter, during the exact stretch of season when your building's own exterior lighting is part of the equation the turtles are working against. Most of what gets written about Longboat Key's turtle season treats the island as one beach with one set of numbers. It is not. And the version most residents have heard of, the one built around the name Longboat Key Turtle Watch, only tells you about half the sand.
Two Counties, Two Patrols, One Beach
The Gulf-facing shoreline on Longboat Key runs about 11 miles, and it is split down the middle by the Manatee-Sarasota county line. North of that line, in Manatee County, Longboat Key Turtle Watch volunteers walk the beach in small teams every morning at civil twilight, the window of light just before sunrise that lets them read tracks in the sand. South of the line, in Sarasota County, the patrols belong to Mote Marine Laboratory itself, run by the same scientists who monitor nesting beaches from Longboat Key down through Venice.
That matters if you live in one of the Gulf-front buildings on the south end. The volunteer group with the recognizable name and the well-run website is not the organization walking past your seawall each morning. It is Mote's own staff, working under a research and monitoring program that treats your stretch of beach as part of a 35-mile system rather than a single-island patrol.
The distinction shows up in the numbers, too. Longboat Key Turtle Watch's own site reported 495 total nests in the Manatee County zone it patrols, as of July 6. By August 18, Your Observer's report on the season, drawing on Mote's tally, put the islandwide count at 1,297 nests. Those two figures come from different weeks, so the comparison is not exact, but the gap is too large to explain away with six weeks of additional laying. Most of what is happening on Longboat Key's sand this season is happening south of that county line, on the beach Mote's scientists walk, not the one most residents assume covers the whole island.
The Numbers Behind This Year's Season
Early in the season, the pace looked close to a repeat of 2025's record year. For the week of May 31 through June 6, researchers counted 149 loggerhead nests and 176 false crawls islandwide, compared to 156 nests and 260 false crawls during the same week in 2025, and a much thinner 105 nests with 257 false crawls in 2024. By the week of June 14 through 20, the season total had climbed to 715 nests, and in the first days of July, Longboat Key Turtle Watch reported the season's first hatched nest.
July brought the season's first real disruption. The precursor to Tropical Storm Bertha never threatened Florida directly, but it knocked out a small number of nest markers on Longboat Key. Longboat Key Turtle Watch president Jeff Driver described it as an ordinary hazard of the season, the kind of overwash that happens any year storms or lunar tides push water higher than expected onto nests closer to the waterline. With nest counts running this high, patrol crews have also had to change how they monitor. Driver has said the group now fully tracks only about every fourth nest with the additional stakes needed for precise mapping, while the rest get a single marker and a much lighter monitoring touch.
By August 18, the islandwide count stood at 1,297 nests, trailing 2025's record pace but still ahead of 2024. For comparison, Casey Key to the south, an eight-mile barrier island Mote also monitors, had already logged 2,240 nests by the same point, a reminder of how much nesting activity varies even between neighboring islands with similar beach conditions.
"I don't expect to see as many hatchings this year as we had last year because of that and just overall numbers, we had an insane season last year so comparing to 2025 is kind of silly," said Melissa Macksey, data manager for Mote's Sea Turtle Conservation and Research Program.
Why 2025 Skews Every Comparison
The reason 2025 keeps showing up as the number everyone measures against is not just that it was a good year. It was unusual in a specific, almost accidental way. After the 2024 hurricane season, storm debris was still scattered across parts of the coastline, and that debris ended up blocking a meaningful amount of inland light from reaching the beach. Fewer visible lights meant fewer disoriented hatchlings, which meant a larger share of nests hatched successfully on top of an already record-setting number of nests laid.
That debris is gone this year. The August disorientation events near Gulf of Mexico Drive are one version of what usually stands between a hatchling and open water: the lighting on our side of the sand, not the turtles' side. Macksey also pointed to the moon phase as a contributing factor. During the recent stretch of heavy hatching, the moon was new, meaning almost no natural light was reflecting off the Gulf to help guide hatchlings toward the horizon, which made artificial light on shore comparatively more likely to pull them off course.
The Ordinance That Reaches Your Balcony
The Town of Longboat Key has a marine turtle protection ordinance that applies directly to Gulf-front properties, and it is written for exactly this problem. During nesting season, which runs May 1 through October 31, the code requires:
- Turning off or blocking any exterior lighting visible from the beach between sundown and sunrise, with turtle-friendly bulbs and fixtures as an accepted fix rather than leaving lights dark entirely
- Removing beach furniture, umbrellas, tents, and recreational equipment like kayaks and paddleboards from the sand at the end of each day
- Contacting Town Code Enforcement to set up a Recreational Use Agreement if a property wants to store equipment on the beach safely rather than hauling it in nightly
In response to the August incidents, Turtle Watch reported that it had already worked with the Town to install light shields and turtle-safe amber fixtures on lights near the affected stretch, on top of the standing 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. lights-out rule that already applies along the Gulf side of the island.
What's Left Between Now and Halloween
Nesting season runs through October 31, and hatching will continue for weeks after the last nests are laid, since incubation takes roughly two months. Volunteers with Longboat Key Turtle Watch have also been doing quieter work all season, excavating hatched nests to count eggshells and check for stragglers. One nest checked in July held 61 hatched eggshells alongside five hatchlings still working their way out and a handful that did not survive. A second nest nearby told a similar story: 73 hatched shells, a handful unhatched. Survival to adulthood for any individual hatchling is famously long odds, often cited around one in a thousand, which is part of why researchers count success in nests and hatch rates rather than individual turtles.
For anyone walking the beach in front of a south-end building this fall, the stakes in the sand are not decoration. They mark real nests being tracked by Mote's own team, on a stretch of coastline that gets far less name recognition than the volunteer group up north, despite carrying most of the season's activity. The lights on your terrace are part of the same system.
If you are thinking about what it actually means to live on this stretch of the Gulf, from the rhythms of the season to the buildings and communities that share this beach, the team at The Koy Group spends its time paying attention to exactly these details. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what is happening on Longboat Key, turtle season included.