On a steamy July night on Wassaw Island, near Savannah, Georgia, volunteer Gabi Steinbach plunged her arm shoulder-deep into the sand to examine a loggerhead sea turtle nest that had hatched five days earlier. With the soft glow of the moon overhead and a red-tinted headlamp illuminating her work, Steinbach carefully removed the remaining eggshells while fellow volunteer Sheri Pittman sorted and counted them.
“Any eggshell that is over 50 percent counts as a hatched egg,” explained Kristen Zemaitis, who leads the volunteer team with the Caretta Research Project, one of Georgia’s long-standing sea turtle conservation initiatives. The team also examines unhatched eggs for signs of development, categorizing them to track nest success and better understand reproductive outcomes.
This meticulous work allows volunteers and scientists to compile a complete record of each nest—from the number of hatchlings to the condition of the remaining eggs. Whenever possible, the team also records the nesting mother’s tag number and takes physical measurements, helping to monitor individual turtles over time.
“It’s an all-night, all-summer effort,” Zemaitis said.
The data collected on Wassaw Island is just one piece of a larger picture spanning Georgia’s 100-mile coastline, as well as parts of Florida, the Carolinas, and Virginia. Volunteers patrol beaches overnight or at dawn, recording thousands of sea turtle nests each year. They track nest locations, hatchling numbers, nest success rates, and detailed information about the nesting females.
This effort has roots stretching back to the 1960s, when a handful of Georgia barrier islands began systematic nest monitoring. Those early efforts helped spark successful initiatives in the late 1980s and 1990s to protect adult turtles from shrimping nets and prevent human interference with nests. Over decades, this work has provided scientists with a deep understanding of sea turtle population dynamics, revealing both long-term declines and the gradual resurgence of hatchlings that were protected during those critical decades.
Today, conservationists continue to monitor sea turtles amid climate change threats, such as rising seas and warmer incubation temperatures. Loggerhead turtles, like many species, exhibit temperature-dependent sex determination: warmer nest temperatures tend to produce females, while cooler conditions yield males. As global temperatures rise, skewed sex ratios could reduce genetic diversity and affect population resilience.
“Fewer males lower the gene pool over time,” Zemaitis explained. “We just don’t know yet what effect that will have on the population.”
To better track these trends, the Caretta Research Project has been placing thermometers in nests since around 2000. Researchers also collect DNA from nesting females and hatchlings to monitor genetic diversity along the southeastern U.S. coast. University of Georgia scientist Brian Shamblin has led a coastal sea turtle DNA project since 2008, now spanning from North Florida to the North Carolina-Virginia border. While researchers know more about females—since they can be sampled during egg-laying—efforts are underway to study male turtles’ DNA to better understand population shifts.
Sea turtles take roughly 30 years to reach sexual maturity, meaning hatchlings today won’t return to lay eggs until the 2050s. “It’s important to collect the data now so we can look back in 30 years and understand how incubation temperatures and other factors influenced population dynamics,” Zemaitis said.
Another major climate change concern is sea level rise, which threatens nesting beaches. Rising waters could make some historical nesting sites unusable, forcing turtles to find new areas. Shamblin’s DNA tracking helps determine whether turtles exhibit site fidelity—returning to the same beaches—or if they are flexible in choosing new nesting sites. Early results show a mix: some turtles nest across multiple states in a single season, while others consistently return to the same islands.
“This is a high-density nesting area, and two of the most erosional islands in South Carolina,” Shamblin said. “If these beaches disappear, the turtles will need alternative sites.”
Yet there is hope. Younger turtles often explore multiple beaches, suggesting that populations could gradually shift as climate change continues. In Georgia, many beaches are less developed and naturally connected, offering potential new nesting destinations as other sites vanish.
Even with the best conservation practices, sea turtle hatchlings face formidable odds. Natural hazards, such as compacted sand from heavy rainfall, can trap hatchlings, preventing them from reaching the ocean. Yet, when volunteers on Wassaw Island uncovered a lone straggler, just an inch and a half long, they cheered as it made its way across the sand and into the surf. With its tiny flippers, the hatchling crawled inch by inch toward the water, buffeted by the waves but ultimately swimming off to start its ocean journey—a journey that, if successful, could see it return to the same beach decades later to nest.
“It’s incredible to witness these hatchlings reach the ocean,” Zemaitis said. “Every success counts, even if it’s just one tiny turtle against a world of predators and challenges.”
Through decades of volunteer-led monitoring, DNA research, and nest protection, Georgia’s sea turtle conservation programs continue to safeguard the species while tracking the impacts of climate change. Their work, though slow and measured, ensures that future generations may still witness loggerhead turtles returning to nest along the Southeast’s coasts—even as the coastline transforms around them.