Welcome to the Coastal Wildlife team’s October issue of our nesting season tracker! Please note that nests indicated on the map are no longer active, but represent totals for the season.
Our data reporting includes year-over-year comparisons, so you can see how the 2026 nesting season has unfolded relative to 2025. While this provides useful context, it’s also important to remember that two-year snapshots are not sufficient to characterize true trends, particularly for long-lived species such as sea turtles.
This season, despite a record number of loggerhead nests on Sanibel and a total nest count only 13 nests shy of our record count set in 2023, we estimate only 32,655 hatchlings made their way to the Gulf. While this number is up from 2025's hatchling count (27,169), it is low given the nest count.
Hatchling production is a critical component of population recovery. Each hatchling that survives represents a potential adult, and whether male or female, can contribute to the production of thousands of hatchlings decades later. More hatchlings emerging from nests and surviving to adulthood improve population fitness and long-term population stability.
Hatchling production can be influenced by a range of environmental factors, including, but not limited to, incubation temperature, storm-related washouts and erosion, and predation. Poor nest productivity resulting in hatchling count reduction, coupled with an already naturally low survivorship to reproductive maturity, has implications for future population declines.
Continued monitoring of nest productivity as well as local environmental variables on our beaches will be important to identify trends and support research into factors influencing nest success and long-term conservation of sea turtle populations.
After sea turtle nesting season officially ends on Oct. 31, we will spend several weeks carefully assessing the final season counts, along with expanded comparative data reflecting multi-year trends. In December, we will send out a final tracker for the 2026 nesting season, along with those trends.
Shorebird nesting season ended on Aug. 31, so the numbers presented here are final counts for the season, and there are no more active nests.
Call our Sea Turtle Hotline at 978-728-3663 to report any issues with nests, nesting turtles, or hatchlings.
