Jim Wilson, who oversees Fort De Soto County Park’s operations, said that dig a hole in the sand and look for stragglers in nest No. 22. He found huge numbers of hatchlings of sea turtles. It is said that the typical loggerhead will lay 80 to 120 eggs every two or three years in a hole about 18 inches deep. The turtles take about two months to hatch, and when they do, a few often get trapped inside the nest.
Wilson, who has a special permit to work with sea turtles, then lets the hatchlings crawl toward the water on their own. He told that they try to keep it as natural as possible because that is the only way they will know how to come back to this same beach some day. Human beings are the greatest enemy of the sea turtles as the eggs are prized in many cultures as an aphrodisiac. Thousands of the reptiles also die each year as a result of commercial fishing.
For years, recreational anglers and conservationists charged that longlines associated with the grouper and shark fisheries killed indiscriminately, catching everything from undersized grouper to protected species such as loggerhead sea turtles. Federal regulators acted swiftly and shut down longline fishing in June.
