Each year, as the last sea turtle hatchlings leave Southwest Florida’s beaches, researchers at Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) collect data that contributes to ongoing conservation efforts. This season, assistant professor Matt Ware led a team of six FGCU students in field research focused on protecting coastal ecosystems and monitoring sea turtle populations.
Ware’s group worked with state agencies at Cayo Costa State Park in Lee County and Don Pedro Island State Park in Charlotte County. The students’ work included identifying loggerhead and green sea turtle nests, excavating them after hatching, and recording information about egg viability and hatchling success. They also monitored environmental threats such as predators, water levels, and light pollution.
“Don Pedro recorded 154 loggerhead and 70 green nests this year — translating to over 5,600 loggerhead and almost 2,000 green hatchlings,” Ware says. “Cayo Costa had 529 loggerhead and 18 green nests producing almost 28,000 loggerhead and over 1,000 green hatchlings.”
The internships provided students with practical experience beyond classroom theory. “It gives them a lot of that hands-on experience that can really help craft a lot of their college experience and where they ultimately want to go with their career,” says Ware.
Biology major Jasmine Burden described her involvement as rewarding: “I’ve grown up working with animals my whole life. Being able to give back to the community and the environment again has been just such an amazing experience.” Marine science major Noelle Eyres said working with sea turtles was “once in a lifetime” for her. She added: “This really gave me insight of how ecosystems work and how I can be a help to marine life.” During her internship under the direction of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Eyres responded to injured or dead turtles washed ashore. “It just made me want to help animals even more,” she says.
Six species of sea turtles are found in U.S. waters; all are protected under federal law according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Five species nest on Southwest Florida beaches—loggerhead and green turtles are listed as threatened while leatherback, Kemp’s ridley, and hawksbill are endangered.
“We have a number of sea turtle species here that all require our protection,” Ware says. “That gives us a tremendous responsibility to appropriately manage those ecosystems that they rely on and that we use every day.”
He highlighted Cayo Costa State Park as an example where human recreation overlaps with wildlife habitat: “We like these nice pristine beaches. So do sea turtles. We like fishing offshore for fun and for food. The sea turtles use those same resources for a lot of the same purposes,” Ware says.
“Having healthy ecosystems provides a lot of services to us as a society that we generally take for granted — clean air, clean water, recreational opportunities. When we can provide a healthy system for turtles, we’re also providing a healthy system for ourselves.”
Sea turtle survival rates remain low; only one in several thousand hatchlings reach adulthood according to Ware.
A NOAA review from 2025 found most global sea turtle populations are recovering due to long-term conservation actions such as beach protections similar to those implemented by FGCU teams (https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/sea-turtle-populations-are-recovering-thanks-to-decades-of-conservation-efforts).
“We want to continue that trend. We want to keep that stewardship, that sustainability, keep that motivation going to keep providing these services —to the sea turtles, to our beach environments, to conservation management as a whole,” Ware says.
“FGCU is greatly positioned both in physical location and the opportunities that we provide through the faculty and the staff and the students to get hands-on with that conservation, to help keep that motivation going.”
