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Town of Hilton Head plans to discuss bringing more comprehensive light-control measures for the beach
On a warm evening in late September, fashlight beams slashed through the darkness of the beachfront. A group of people set to the task of arranging about 150 luminaries – white bags containing small candles – in the shape of a heart, part of an elaborate romantic marriage proposal for two tourists staying in the nearby Palmetto Dunes.
Sometime later in the pre-dawn hours, members of the island’s sea turtle patrol — the volunteers and town staf who each year mark and protect the threatened loggerhead sea turtle nests – mounted their dune buggy and began their daily scan of the 12 miles of island beachfront. They could see the luminaries, their candles no longer burning, when they first passed Palmetto Dunes. When they returned, they saw the set-up. What was meant to be the site of a happy proposal had turned into a terrible scene.
“By the time we got back to the luminaries, we realized that there was a nest immediately adjacent,” said Sarah Skigen, the town’s natural resources associate.
With every nest the patrol monitors, the staf has ways to determine the number of hatchlings that emerged and whether they made it to the ocean. In this case, they looked at tracks in the sand and saw that nearly all of the 60 hatchlings that crawled out of the sand had become disoriented by the luminaries, tiring themselves out by wandering into the dunes and all over the beach.
“The hatchlings were led everywhere except the ocean,” Skigen said. One turtle was found still alive, but it was failing about and looked weak in the ocean.
The patrol believes the turtles were likely led astray by a combination of the candles in the bags, the glow of the fashlights and even just the refective whiteness of the bags themselves. Once hatchlings crawl out of their nests, they head for the brightest image on the horizon. There was little to no moon out to compete with the other light sources on this night, Skigen said. Turtle watchers were hoping over the next few days that more hatchlings would emerge from the nest – which typically has an average of 120 eggs each – but they were disappointed.
The incident was one of 34 reported disorientations statewide, an increase from 23 incidents last year. Twelve of those were on Hilton Head alone. The disorientations statewide have afected as many as 4,080 hatchlings, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.
The marriage proposal scene was the most prominent turtle disorientation case in recent years, and resulted in the one of the largest death tolls. It stands out among other cases because many times the confusing light comes from an ambient source that is hard to pinpoint — street lights, porch lights, the glow of a nearby urban area. This time it was obvious. The story ran in newspapers and on web sites across the country.
Now, the town is looking to beef up its arsenal of regulations and laws that will help it go after people violating the beach’s lights-out ordinance and provide better protection for the threatened species.
Later this fall, Skigen and other town stafers plan to go before a Town Council committee to discuss more comprehensive light-control measures for the beach. Something akin to a ticket – similar to ones that can be issued for illegally starting a fire, littering or setting of fireworks on the beach — could be in the works.
Education is key
The town’s ordinances regarding lights on or near the beach during turtle season are currently directed at preventing new construction or redeveloped buildings from installing bright lights that shine onto the beach. Flood lights are prohibited, balcony lights must be hooded to avoid spilling over onto the beach and windows above the first foor must be tinted or shaded in some way. Any extra or decorative lights must be taken down or covered during turtle season, May 1 to Oct. 31. Violators can face fines of up to $500 or 30 days in jail.
But when the town finds someone on the beach with fashlights or other artificial lights, the only recourse is to issue a warning. The people behind the luminaries proposal got chewed out by a member of town staf, but still only got a warning.
The main problem seems to be a lack of awareness. Hilton Head’s 35,000 year-round residents might be familiar with the regulations regarding sea turtles, but the 2 million visitors who pass through may never have heard of loggerhead sea turtles before. Nor do they know that the Southeastern coast is the species’ main nesting area in the western Atlantic.
“It’s like people say: when you come across that bridge, they stop at the welcome center and check about half of their brain right there,” said Bob Sharp, general manager of the Palmetto Dunes Property Owners Association.
Officials in Palmetto Dunes, a community that has a mix of tourist and residential properties, are taking their own measures to address the issue, and hope by next season they will have developed a comprehensive education program.
The association has spent thousands of dollars on plastic stands to use for information distribution and has added more turtle season details to its web site. By the spring, the association will send out more reminders to properties. Officials are looking at installing signs at the main gate and beach entrances during turtle nesting season, said Kylie Fusco, community relations liaison.
The hardest part is cracking the shell of people’s vacations to raise awareness of the delicate nature of the nesting habits, Fusco said.
“They’re not from around here and they don’t even know that the turtles are here,” Fusco said.
Sharp said he wasn’t sure if creating stricter penalties – such as the ones that exist for alcohol on the beach – would solve all the problems.
He said people in Palmetto Dunes need to get to the point where concerns about nesting sea turtles are as second nature as other Hilton Head-specific issues, like navigating a trafic circle or using a service yard instead of bringing trash to the street.
Sharp said he heard of one home in Palmetto Dunes that kept its lights blazing and pointed at the beach as 29 violations piled up on the door. Finally, someone with the turtle patrol got frustrated and buried the lights in the sand.
“By golly, if they’re inside and they’re partying and they’re doing what they’re doing, they’re not thinking of turtles,” Sharp said. “Hopefully it will make a difference and we won’t lose 60 turtles next year.”
Will enforcement work?
DuBose Griffin, sea turtle coordinator for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, said the best-case situation environmental officials can hope for is that rental property owners make their homes “dummy proof.” Owners should rig up their properties so that, even with every light in the house on, no light escapes onto the beach.
Since the state’s beachfront management act was adopted in 1988, every coastal area in South Carolina has been required to have regulations addressing lighting and other concerns over sea turtles, Griffin said.
The town’s proposed new measures could provide some added firepower for turtle watchers, but Hilton Head would be heading into uncharted territory by enacting stricter rules that go after people causing the disorienting light, she said. With the way the law is written now, Griffin said she’s never heard of anyone getting an actual ticket or fine for directly causing turtle deaths.
“The real question is, if enforcement increases, does the number of disorientations go down?” she said. “If a town enforces its lighting ordinance and keeps its beach dark, there will be no disorientation.”
