1st sea turtle nest found on Mississippi beach since 2018

Christian Passage Aug. 8 (BUS): Crews on the beach have found the first sea turtle nest on the Mississippi mainland in four years.

A crew of Harrison County Sand Beach cleanup teams found what appeared to be a track of turtles east of Bass Christian Harbor, officials said.

The Associated Press (AP) reported that they protected the area and contacted the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, which followed the paths to the nesting site now marked with stakes and tape.

The eggs likely belong to a protected loggerhead sea turtle or even the rarer Kemp’s sea turtle, Ridley, the most endangered species of sea turtle, said Moby Solangi, head of the Marine Studies Group.

The exact species of turtle will not be known until the eggs hatch in 50 to 60 days. About 1 in 10,000 sea turtle eggs reaches adulthood. The turtles lay 60 to 100 eggs in a nest and have multiple nests during one season, Solanji told The Sun Herald in Biloxi.

This is the first sea turtle nest on mainland Mississippi since 2018, officials said, although there have been unofficial reports of nests on uninhabited islands of the wall.

Solanji said Mississippi Sound and the Gulf of Mexico are important habitats for sea turtles, but the 2010 oil spill and the opening of the Bonnet Carré Passage in 2019 hurt the turtle population.

“After all the ecological disasters we’ve been through, that’s a good sign. When[the turtle numbers]go down, it means the ecosystem that supports them is having a hard time. When the animals start to reproduce, it means things are starting to get better,” Solanji said.

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