VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. – Volusia County is having a record-breaking sea turtle nesting season — and it’s not even close. As of June 12, 714 turtle nests have been recorded along the county’s beaches, blowing past the previous record of 470 nests set in 2023. Volunteers and county staff say the numbers are exciting — but they’re also raising questions about what’s driving so many turtles to the shoreline.
The surge comes after a particularly slow year in 2025. Experts believe low nesting numbers last season were tied to ongoing beach construction projects along the coast.
For Susie Amaro, a volunteer with Volusia Turtle Patrol, the comeback is a testament to the turtles themselves.
“This year is proof that they are resilient, they do come back to the beach again and again, in spite of whatever happened in the years prior,” Amaro said.
Volusia Turtle Patrol is a group of resident volunteers who monitor and protect nests from the moment they’re laid. Once a nest is in the sand, the 45-day clock starts. Volunteers watch for signs of hatching, then wait three more days before excavating the nest to collect data.
“Once it hits the 45-day mark and once we see evidence of the hatched nest, we can see the tracks going out to the ocean and then three days later we dig in and count the hatched eggs, sometimes we find live babies and all the data is collected and sent to FWC,” Amaro said.
This season, loggerheads make up the majority of nests, but leatherbacks, green sea turtles and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles have also been documented. The Kemp’s ridley is considered a rare visitor to Volusia County’s coastline. Identifying the species starts with a simple clue in the sand.
“Each species has a unique crawl pattern,” said Nicole Weiss, Habitat Conservation Plan Program Field Manager for Volusia County Environmental Management.
As for why the numbers are so high, Weiss points to landmark federal legislation passed more than 50 years ago.
“A lot of it, we think, comes from the Endangered Species Act and marine turtle protection act — those went into place in the 70’s and it takes about 25-30 years for turtles to reach sexual maturity and get into that breeding population,” Weiss said.
Many of the turtles nesting today likely hatched on Volusia County’s beaches — a behavior known as natal homing, where females return to their birth beach to lay their own eggs. That means the record numbers seen this season could set the stage for another historic year roughly 25 to 30 years from now, when today’s hatchlings reach maturity and return.
In the meantime, Volusia Turtle Patrol and county staff are asking beachgoers to do their part: pack out trash, turn off lights at night and fill in holes and knock down sandcastles before heading home. Those seemingly small steps can mean the difference between a hatchling making it to the water — or not.