Reading the Sand

Mary Mills waits until there is enough light to read the beach.

The air is still cool, the tide low, and the shorebirds are just beginning to work the wet sand. For Mills, those birds are a clock.

“When I can see the birds flying, we’re looking at first light,” she says. “I love being down here at this time. I love first light even more than the sunrise.”

For the patrol, that timing matters. The turtles usually come ashore at night. By morning, the evidence can be faint: a crawl mark from the water, a disturbed mound near the dunes, the sweep of flippers in the sand. Before surfers begin checking the sandbars and beach walkers settle into their routines, Mills is looking for signs left overnight.

Mills has volunteered with Beaches Sea Turtle Patrol for 13 years. On this morning, her assigned route runs south toward 20th Avenue South, one section of the 7.5 miles the patrol monitors from the Atlantic Beach/Hanna Park line to the Duval/St. Johns County line.

The work is easy to misunderstand from the outside. Most people see the result: a marked nest, protective tape, a sign asking beachgoers to stay back. They do not see the first-light survey that found it, or the photos, measurements, documentation, and reporting that follow.

“I’ve been trained to see the difference between tire tracks and people tracks and turtle tracks,” Mills says, scanning as she walks.

Beaches Sea Turtle Patrol is an all-volunteer nonprofit that protects endangered sea turtles, their nesting habitat, and other marine life while educating the public. Its earliest volunteers worked with Greenpeace in the 1980s before forming an independent organization. The group became a 501(c)(3) in 1991.

Jen Burns, the organization’s president, says loggerheads are the most common nesting species on local beaches. Nesting season runs from May 1 through October 31. During that time, patrol members survey the beach at first light, check existing nests, look for new crawl activity, and report their findings to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Marine Turtle Program.

On patrol, a crawl gives volunteers the first clues. Volunteers look at the pattern in the sand to determine the species and whether the turtle nested or turned back. A confirmed nest is marked and monitored throughout the season.

The turtle’s preferred nesting area is usually higher on the beach, closer to the dunes.

“Their goal is to nest close to the foot of the dune,” Mills says. “That’s the safest spot for the babies.”

But Mills’ assigned zone is quiet. No new activity. No fresh crawl.

The beach, though, is no longer empty. A group from St. Paul’s has gathered near the sand to pray the rosary. Other early walkers move along the shoreline with their dogs. Mills adjusts her route and keeps moving, careful not to interrupt anyone, but still checking the sand around them.

“When encountering people, it’s really important to be respectful,” she says. “But at the same time, I’m also looking for tracks.”

The patrol moves through a public beach without trying to control it, looking for signs most people would not recognize. Surfers, photographers, dog walkers, families, and beachfront residents all move through the same narrow strip of sand. The patrol’s work is to make sure what happened overnight is not missed in the morning.

Then word comes in that tracks have been found farther south, near 32nd Avenue South. Mills keeps walking.

By then, the beach is filling in. The sun is higher, and the sand is getting harder to read. What is obvious at first light can become faint an hour later.

At the nest, the marks become clear once Mills points them out: the crawl from the water, the body pit, the flipper marks, the mound where the eggs are buried. A loggerhead came ashore sometime during the night.

“This is a great spot,” Mills says. “She’s not down low.”

The mechanics are remarkable. A loggerhead nest averages about 110 eggs, Burns says, though some hold more. The female digs a body pit, carves the egg chamber with her rear flippers, lays, covers the nest, and returns to the ocean — a process that can take hours. She will not stay, and she will not return to this nest. But across a single season she may come ashore to nest five to seven times before spending the next two or three years out at sea, feeding and rebuilding her body.

The nest becomes part of the record. Photos are taken. The crawl is documented. The site is marked. The information is reported to the state system that helps wildlife officials track nesting activity across Florida.

“Everything we do, every step we take, is permitted,” Mills says. “We have to attend training. We’re certified.”

That structure matters because a turtle can come ashore and nest, or she can abandon the attempt and return to the ocean. That is called a false crawl.

“One of the reasons is lights on the beach,” Mills says. “Building lights, but also people with flashlights and cell phones and bonfires.”

A Brighter Horizon, the Wrong Way

Artificial light remains one of the patrol’s main concerns. Hatchlings instinctively move toward the brightest horizon. On a natural beach, that is usually moonlight and starlight reflecting off the ocean. Artificial lights from homes, businesses, phones, pools, streets, or bonfires can overpower that cue and pull them inland toward dunes, roads, or other danger. Bright lights can also cause nesting females to turn back before laying eggs, creating what patrol volunteers call a false crawl.

Burns puts the risk plainly: “Artificial lights overpower that natural glow.”

The flat part is not cosmetic.

In 2015, during a morning survey, patrol members found a nesting mother flipped upside down in a deep man-made crater. She had likely been trapped for hours after laying her eggs, unable to right herself in the loose sand. With help from lifeguards, she was freed unharmed.

“It could easily have been fatal,” Burns says.

Mills has filled plenty of holes herself. Smaller ones she handles on patrol. Larger pits are reported so crews can come out.

“When you dig a hole, fill it in,” she says. “When you build a sandcastle, before you leave, knock it down. That helps the turtles make their way.”

The same caution applies when hatchlings emerge. A person may think they are helping by picking one up and carrying it to the water, but Mills says that can do harm. Hatchlings need the crawl. As they move across the sand, they imprint on the beach, stretch their flippers, and prepare for the swim.

“Their journey is exceedingly important,” she says.

If someone sees a nesting turtle or hatchlings, Burns says to stay back, turn off all lights, and report the sighting to Beaches Sea Turtle Patrol’s 24-hour hotline at 904-613-6081. Text is preferred. A distance of 25 yards from a nesting turtle is enough to watch without disturbing her.

Mills is careful not to turn that message into scolding. She does not want people pushed off the beach. She wants them to understand it better.

Most immediate threats come from ordinary beach behavior: lights left on, trash left behind, deep holes abandoned, gear stored overnight, people getting too close to a nesting turtle. Mills also mentions plastics, boat strikes, fishing line, hooks, nets, and light pollution. Sea turtles face natural predators too, but the human-created hazards are the ones people can reduce.

Burns says the turtles’ role extends beyond the nest. They feed on seagrass, jellyfish, and sponges. Nest remnants enrich the sand and support dune vegetation.

A Single Sighting

Mills’ own connection started with a single sighting. Before she lived here, she was visiting from Maryland and standing near the end of the Jacksonville Beach Pier when she looked down and saw a large sea turtle in the water.

“There she was, this most magnificent sea turtle,” she says. “It was miraculous to see.”

After she retired and moved near people who volunteered with the patrol, she joined. Now she walks the beach, helps with outreach, and teaches children about the sea turtle life cycle and the threats turtles face.

“The children are the future,” she says. “To get them inspired by conservation is the key to saving the turtles.”

Some of the patrol’s work is long-range. Sea turtles often do not reproduce until they are 15 to 20 years old, and individual turtles do not nest every year. Burns says the patrol has documented a general increase in nesting, likely connected to conservation efforts that began in the 1980s.

There is one part of sea turtle biology the patrol explains with a phrase that tends to stick: “hot chicks and cool dudes.”

Sand temperature determines sex. Warmer sand tends to produce more females, cooler sand more males. It is a quiet detail with a long shadow — as beaches warm, those ratios tilt, and the future balance of entire populations shifts with them.

The odds remain severe. Burns says only about one in 1,000 hatchlings survives to adulthood. Males will not return to land unless they are sick or injured. Females may not return for decades, until they come back to nest.

That is why volunteers focus on the hazards they can control.

“People protect what they love,” Burns says. “Once they learn about sea turtles, they usually fall in love with them, and that connection inspires stewardship.”

By the time Mills turns back, the nest has been identified and marked. The morning has shifted from patrol hours into beach hours. More people are arriving, most unaware that a turtle crossed the same sand during the night.

It is a beach that is both habitat and public place. Mills keeps reading the sand while the rest of it wakes up around her.