The endangered, soft-shelled sea species is rarely seen here.

SARASOTA — For only the second time in Sarasota County history, a leatherback sea turtle nest has been found.

Two nests, in fact, were located by turtle patrollers — one in Venice and one in Sarasota, according to a Mote Marine Laboratory biologist, who said the exact locations are being kept secret to protect the nests from harm. They have been staked off and caged to ward off predators.

"It’s very exciting for us. We don’t know a lot about leatherbacks here," said Mote senior biologist Melissa Bernhard of the endangered turtle. "We're going to do whatever we can to get as much data from this nest as possible without treating it differently or harming the turtles in any way. We are in the early stages of getting over the shock of it."



The last nest was found in 2001, but it did not hatch. In 2015 Mote staffers rescued a juvenile leatherback that was caught in a crab pot line off Lido Key.

A successful hatch could mean a potential expansion of the range for leatherbacks, whose numbers have declined in the last several years, Bernhard said. The turtles are deep-diving animals that spend most of their time in the open ocean. They feed primarily on jellyfish and have soft shells.

Hatchlings take about 16 years to reach sexual maturity. They are known to remigrate to their nests to lay eggs.

Leatherbacks are distinguished by their soft streamlined shells and firm, rubbery skin.

"Kind of like all turtles, they are subject to human interaction," Bernhard said. "They rely really heavily on the coastal environment."

Initially, turtle patrol volunteers, who mark and monitor sea turtle nests along 35 miles of Sarasota County beaches, reported the nest found earlier in the week as a green sea turtle crawl.

But Mote biologists questioned the reports because greens normally nest from June to September. The trails they make when coming ashore to nest, called crawls, are about 4½ feet wide, and those of loggerheads are about 3 feet wide.

This nest was about the width of a car.

"This is much bigger than anything we have seen here in 18 years," said Bernhard, noting the tracks indicate the flipper span.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said about 50 percent of leatherback nesting in Florida occurs in Martin and Palm Beach County. There were 949 nests documented in 2018 compared to 1,604 in 2014.

The largest leatherback ever recorded was 10 feet from the tip of its beak to the tip of its tail and weighed 2,019 pounds, the Sea Turtle Conservancy said.

Leatherbacks average between 4 to 6 feet long and between 500 and 2,000 pounds.

There is a possibility, because of the distance between the nests, that both nests were made by the same turtle.

Leatherbacks nest between four and seven times per season, according to the Sea Turtle Conservancy, every two to three years. But they usually average 10 days between nesting.

There could be as many as 80 fertilized eggs and 30 smaller, unfertilized eggs in each nest, the size of billiard balls. The eggs take about 50 to 80 days to hatch.

Leatherback populations worldwide are estimated at 34,000 to 36,000 compared to 115,000 in 1980.

Bernhard said it is unknown what led this turtle to make a home in Sarasota County.

"They spend more of their life in deeper water further offshore, which I think is why they are on the East Coast rather than the Gulf," she said. "I don’t know if she got washed in from the storms or got off course and decided to stick around. Maybe she decided to try something new and come here."

An inventory of each nest will be performed once the hatchlings emerge to gather more data and to determine whether any live babies are still in the nest. Any healthy stragglers will be sent out to the Gulf.