Sea Turtle Nesting Season in Panama City Beach: What Guests Should Know

If you walk down to the Gulf early enough in the summer, before the beach fills up, you will sometimes find a set of tracks coming out of the water and heading up the sand. They look like something dragged a tire across the beach overnight. That is a sea turtle crawl, and it means a female came ashore in the dark, dug a nest, laid somewhere around a hundred eggs, and went back into the water before sunrise.

Most guests have no idea this is happening a few hundred feet from where they are staying. Nesting season overlaps almost exactly with the busiest months in Panama City Beach, which means the turtles and the visitors are sharing the same stretch of sand all summer. The good news is that being a good neighbor to them costs you almost nothing. It is mostly about lights, holes, and what you leave behind at the end of the day.

When sea turtle season runs in Panama City Beach

Nesting season officially runs from May 1 through October 31 every year. That window does not shift, so you can plan around it. Within that window there are really two phases.

May through roughly August is nesting. Females come ashore at night, usually well after dark, dig a chamber in the dry sand above the tide line, lay their eggs, cover the nest, and leave. She does not stay. She does not come back to check on it.

Eggs incubate in the sand for about two months, so hatching starts in July and runs strong through September and into October. If you are visiting in August or September, you are here for the busiest part of hatching season. That is when the odds of stumbling onto a marked nest, or seeing a stake and tape square roped off in the sand, are highest.

What kinds of turtles nest here

Loggerheads are by far the most common nester on this stretch of the Panhandle. Green sea turtles show up too, and every so often a leatherback or a Kemp’s ridley makes an appearance. All of them are protected under state and federal law, which is why the nests get marked and roped instead of just left alone.

Who is out there marking the nests

Panama City Beach Turtle Watch has been doing this since 1991. Volunteers walk roughly 17.5 miles of beach at dawn, every single morning from May 1 through mid September, looking for crawls from the night before. When they find one, they confirm the nest, mark it with stakes and tape, and log it.

They are usually out there before most vacationers have had coffee. If you are up early and you see someone in a marked shirt walking the waterline with a clipboard and a probe stick, that is who you are looking at. They are happy to answer a question. They are not happy if you walk inside the tape.

Turtle Watch can be reached at 850-238-9895 if you want to ask about their program or volunteer opportunities.

The lighting rule, and why the west end matters

Artificial light is the single biggest threat to hatchlings. When they break out of the nest, they find the water by heading toward the brightest, lowest horizon, which for millions of years has been the moon and starlight reflecting off the Gulf. A bright condo balcony, a parking lot pole, or a phone flashlight beats the moon every time, and the hatchlings turn inland instead. Most of the ones that go the wrong way do not make it.

Panama City Beach takes this seriously enough that the city sends officers out at night with light meters during nesting season. The standard for any light visible from the beach is low, long, and shielded. Low means mounted close to the ground. Long means long wavelength, so amber or red rather than white or blue. Shielded means the bulb itself is hidden so the light points down and not out at the water.

This is one of the quiet advantages of the west end. The stretch of beach out past the main tourist corridor is simply darker at night than the high rise section. Fewer towers, fewer parking lot floodlights, fewer neon signs facing the Gulf. Sundial Suites sits about three minutes on foot from the sand out here, which means when you walk down at night you are walking into real darkness, not into a wall of glare. Bring a red light if you want to see your feet and leave the phone flashlight in your pocket.

What to do if you find a nest or hatchlings

The rules are short and they matter.

• Do not touch the nest or the stakes. Stay outside the marked square. Do not dig near it, and keep dogs well away.
• No flash photography. No flashlights. Not on hatchlings, not on a nesting female. A single camera flash can send a whole group of hatchlings in the wrong direction.
• Do not pick them up or carry them to the water. The crawl from the nest to the surf is how they orient themselves. Skipping it hurts them.
• If you find a nesting female, you can watch, quietly, from a distance. Stay behind her, do not crowd her, do not get in front of her face, and do not shine anything on her.
• Report it. To report a nest or hatchlings on the beach, call Panama City Beach Police at 850-233-5000.
• For an injured or dead sea turtle, call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission wildlife hotline at 888-404-3922. It is staffed 24 hours.

If you are staying with us and you are not sure whether what you found counts as worth calling in, text Reanna at 360-865-9888. She would rather field a question about a pile of sand than have somebody guess wrong.

How to leave the beach at night

There is a simple version of this that locals repeat all summer. Leave the beach clean, dark, and flat.

Clean. Take your chairs, umbrellas, coolers, and tents with you when you go in for the evening. Anything left overnight is an obstacle a two ounce hatchling has to navigate around, and Panama City Beach has leave no trace rules on the beach for exactly this reason.

Dark. Close your curtains at night if your unit faces the water. Turn off exterior lights you are not using. Skip the flashlight walk on the sand after dark.

Flat. This is the one people forget. Fill in the holes your kids dug and knock down the sandcastles before you leave. A hole that looks small to an adult is a pit a hatchling cannot climb out of, and adult females get trapped in them too. It takes ninety seconds with a foot to fix.

None of this ruins anybody’s vacation. Dig the hole. Build the castle. Just push the sand back in on your way up.

Can you actually watch a nest hatch

Not on demand, and not by staking out a nest yourself. Hatchings almost always happen at night and the timing is unpredictable within a window of several days.

What does exist are permitted public events. Panama City Beach Turtle Watch occasionally opens a nest excavation to the public, which is when volunteers dig out a nest a few days after it hatches to count the shells and check for stragglers. These get posted on the Panama City Beach Turtle Watch Facebook page, usually with only one or two days notice. If you are visiting in August or September and this is on your list, check that page daily rather than planning around it.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission also permits guided turtle walks and hatchling releases in various parts of the state. Availability changes year to year, so check current listings before you count on one.

Where to see the quieter beach

If the turtle side of this appeals to you, the west end is the part of Panama City Beach you want. Camp Helen State Park sits at the far western edge with undeveloped shoreline and a lake behind the dunes. The public access points out this direction are less crowded than the ones near the main attractions, and the dune line is in better shape, which is exactly the habitat nesting females prefer.

Walking down at first light is the best time of day out here regardless of turtles. The beach is empty, the water is usually flat, and if there was a crawl overnight the tracks are still there before the wind and the foot traffic erase them. From Sundial Suites that walk is about three minutes, which makes it easy to do on a whim with a cup of coffee.

Frequently asked questions

When is sea turtle nesting season in Panama City Beach?

May 1 through October 31 every year. Nesting is concentrated in May through August and hatching runs from July into October, with August and September being the busiest hatching stretch.

What do I do if I find a sea turtle nest on the beach?

Leave it alone, stay outside any marking, keep lights and flash photography off it, and call Panama City Beach Police at 850-233-5000 to report it. For an injured or dead turtle, call the Florida wildlife hotline at 888-404-3922.

Can I use my phone flashlight on the beach at night during turtle season?

You should not. White light disorients hatchlings and pulls them away from the water. If you need light to walk, use a red or amber light held low and pointed at the sand.

Do I have to take my beach chairs and tent in every night?

Yes. Panama City Beach has leave no trace rules on the beach, and gear left overnight blocks both nesting females and hatchlings. Take it with you when you head in for the evening.

Is the west end of Panama City Beach better for seeing turtle activity?

It tends to be, mostly because it is darker and less built up than the central tourist corridor. Fewer bright lights facing the Gulf means better nesting conditions and better odds that hatchlings orient correctly. It is also just a quieter beach in general.

Are sea turtle nests protected by law?

Yes. Sea turtles, their nests, and their eggs are protected under both Florida and federal law. Disturbing a nest, a nesting female, or hatchlings is illegal.

Come see the quiet side of the beach

Book a Sundial Suites stay direct at sundialsuites.com/book/ and save 10 to 15 percent versus the OTAs. Text Reanna at 360-865-9888 with any local question.