Did you know that YOU can to help protect and save our Lowcountry Sea Turtles by following a couple of simple guidelines?

It’s critical that residents and visitors alike do their part to ensure that sea turtles have a safe and successful nesting season.

LIGHTS OUT
Keep our beaches dark for the turtles. Beaufort County lighting ordinance states that there shall be no visible light on our beaches May through October for our turtles. This includes house and porch lighting as well as NO flashlights on the beach. Lights disturb our nesting turtles and may be deadly to our hatchlings trying to find the ocean. Red colored lights are a no-no as well.

PACK IN and PACK OUT
Remove all items from the beach every evening prior to going home. This includes: tents, chairs, sand toys and trash. Items left on the beach may cause problems for our turtles trying to find a spot to nest.

FILL IN HOLES
Please fill in any large holes that you dig above the high tide line. Turtles may become trapped in these. Large holes also pose a threat to people walking on the beach at night. When hatching season starts these holes may prove deadly traps for hatchlings trying to find the ocean.

PICK UP TRASH
Help keep our beaches clean and safe of debris that may end up in our ocean. Sea turtles, as well as many other ocean animals, may become very ill or die from ingesting plastics and other debris.

GIVE THE TURTLES SPACE
If are lucky enough to see a turtle on the beach, it is important to give her plenty of space to lay. It is illegal to disturb a nesting turtle. If you spook her, she may not lay and that entire clutch of eggs could be lost.

DO NOT WALK IN TURTLE TRACKS
If you come upon turtle tracks on the beach early in the morning or late in the evening, it is very important that you do NOT walk in these. The Turtle Team uses these tracks as well as other field signs to locate the eggs. If the tracks and other nesting signs have been trampled, it makes it far more difficult to find the nest. Once the Turtle Team has investigated a crawl in the morning, large “X” marks are placed on the crawl so that we know it is an old crawl the next day.

Thank you in advance for doing your part to help save our beautiful Sea Turtles!

To learn more visit http://bit.ly/scseaturtles

Photo shared with ESPB by Cheryl Berrios Forbes