ENGLEWOOD -- There's good news and bad news for Southwest Florida's sea turtle population this year.

First, the bad: The number of sea turtle nests from the bottom of Manasota Key in Charlotte County to the tip of Longboat Key in Sarasota County continued to decline.

Now the good: There were more hatchlings that made it to the Gulf, perchance to swim away and enjoy very long lives.

That was the word Wednesday from Tony Tucker, a scientist with Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota.

With the annual turtle-nesting season "officially" ending on Nov. 1, Tucker said preliminary estimates indicated the number of turtle nests along the shore continued to drop this year, as they have since 1998.

He said scientists believe there are a number of reasons for the drop, including the frequency and strength of red tide, fishing practices in the Atlantic Ocean and the increase in hurricanes in recent years.

Counts by the turtle patrol volunteers show there were 1,950 nests in 2006.

The breakdown, according to Tucker, is:

* On the Sarasota County portion of Manasota Key: 116 nests and 164 false crawls.

* On the Charlotte County side of Manasota Key: 188 nests and 274 false crawls. These figures were supplied to Mote by the Coastal Wildlife Club, a volunteer organization that patrols the key.

* Longboat Key, Manatee County: 71 nests, 83 false crawls.

* Longboat Key, Sarasota County: 87 nests, 76 false crawls.

* Lido Key, 24 nests, 35 false crawls.

* Siesta Key, 117 nests, 78 false crawls.

* Casey Key, 433 nests, 304 false crawls.

* Venice, 174 nests, 110 false crawls.

Tucker said it was too early to interpret the recent numbers as a foreboding trend. He noted this year's numbers were equivalent to the nests reported in 1991, when a surge was first seen in the turtle nesting population here.

That trend continued until 1998, then began to drop.

If you look take a longer view of the figures -- from 1991 to 2006 -- the trend line is even.

A longer view is necessary when assessing the health of the turtle population, he said, because turtles live a long life: They do not reach maturity for roughly 30 years.

The hatchlings that scrambled from the nest to the Gulf on Manasota Beach in 1976 may just be returning to their home beaches now, Tucker said. And this year's number may have as much to do with present conditions as it does with the conditions three decades ago.

Sea turtles are travelers. Our turtles will round the peninsula of Florida and cross the ocean to the eastern Atlantic, then return from time to time.

"They will have crossed the Atlantic twice by the time they are 15 years old," Tucker said.

When it's time, they return to lay their own eggs.

"They come back to the beaches they were born in," he said. It may not be the exact same spot -- or beach -- but it's someplace in the area.

Tucker said there were hazards, including the man-made variety. One big problem is long-line fishing, which seriously harms the turtle population.

Then there are environmental problems like red tide and hurricanes that wash out nests in large numbers.

For instance, Tucker said, the hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 devastated the turtle nests along the Gulf shores.

This year, however, there were no hurricanes, and that was good news for the sea turtles.

"Even though we had fewer nests this year, we had good recruitment," he said.

More hatchlings made it out of the nests. Tucker said scientists estimated 52,231 hatchlings were counted from Venice to Longboat Key.

And, he added, with Manasota Key's high number of nests, "We could probably double that number for Manasota by itself."

Unfortunately, the bad news for turtles is that getting out of the shell is a very small part of the battle. The seas are nasty and brutish, and, for most hatchlings, life is very, very short.

Only about one in a thousand hatchlings lives to become an adult, Tucker said.

But the good news is that in around 2036 or so, another 50- to 100-plus sea turtles will swim back to our shores to start another round.

 {mos_sb_discuss:13} Life in Paradise or not

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