Kate Mansfield, lead of University of Central Florida's Marine Turtle Research Group, said that in the 1980's the beaches that the university monitored only had less than 50 green turtle nests per year.
For the past few years, however, conservationists count more and more of sea turtle nests on the beaches of Florida and 2015 has so far been the best year. The endangered sea turtles have set a nesting record this year and there are still a few more weeks of nesting season to go.
Starting in May and until the end of the turtle nesting season, students and researchers working with the Marine Turtle Research group count the number of sea turtles that nest in Florida's Brevard County.
This year, the group has already counted over 12,000 nests at the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge surpassing the 11,839 nests that were recorded in 2013. Mansfield said that the same beaches had less than 50 green sea turtle nests back in the 1980's.
"This is really a comeback story," Mansfield said. "It is a really remarkable recovery and reflects a 'perfect storm' of conservation successes-from the establishment of the Archie Carr, to implementing the Endangered Species Act, among many other conservation initiatives."
Mansfield, however, noted that that turtles have to live at least 25 years before they can start to reproduce so it will be decades before researchers can certainly know if the current nesting trends indicate long-lasting recovery for the marine animals' population.
"It's promising and exciting, but the long term perspective is needed and helps put what we see now in a broader perspective," Mansfield said. "For the past five years we've had good years, but we have to look at this over 25-plus years."
Strong protection programs in Georgia and the Carolinas are also believed to have contributed to the sea turtle's dramatic rebound. Researchers and volunteers in Georgia have so far counted 2,292 loggerhead nests marking the fifth season in six years that Georgia surpassed previous sea turtle nesting record.
Mark Dodd, from Georgia Department of Natural Resources' sea turtle recovery program, said that for every big year, researchers become more confident of a recovery period.
Sea turtle experts said that the numbers reinforce the belief that the threatened loggerhead sea turtles make a comeback after nearly four decades of federal protection as a threatened species listed under the Endangered Species Act.
