Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Caretta caretta)
The adult loggerhead sea turtle has a rich reddish-brown carapace and yellow plastron. The loggerhead’s large skull provides for the attachment of strong jaw muscles for crushing conchs, horseshoe crabs and other crustaceans. Loggerheads usually leave the cold coastal waters in the winter and are often seen along the western edge of the Gulf Stream. The major nesting area for the loggerhead in the western Atlantic is the southeastern United States. In South Carolina, the primary nesting beaches are mainly undeveloped beaches. The sea turtle season runs from May to October with the nesting portion from mid-May to mid-August and hatching portion from July to October. The average clutch size in South Carolina is 120 eggs. The average incubation duration is 55 - 60 days. The nesting population experienced a three percent per year decline since records began in 1980 but with continued nest and beach habitat protection efforts in conjunction with reduced mortality in the water with use of turtle excluder devices (TEDs), the population is showing signs of recovery with nest counts increasing along with numbers of nesting females.
On July 28, 1978, the loggerhead sea turtle was designated as threatened. In 1988, a fifth-grade class in the town of Ninety Six thought that if the loggerhead turtle was the state reptile, it would bring more attention to the plight of this threatened species and perhaps help conservation efforts. They wrote letters to their state Senator, Mr. John Drummond, who introduced a bill in the legislature. They also came as a class and displayed a banner from the balcony of the Senate. The bill passed on the last day of the session and the loggerhead became our state reptile.
Conservation Status - The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) share jurisdiction for sea turtles under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), with the USFWS’s responsibility for turtles on the beach and NMFS’s jurisdiction in the marine environment. The loggerhead sea turtle was listed as threatened on July 28, 1978 (43 FR 32800) under the ESA. In 2011, the listing was later revised from a single threatened population to nine distinct population segments (DPSs) designated as either threatened or endangered (76 FR 58868). These DPSs are isolated from each other, considered discrete populations, based on tagging data, telemetry studies, demography, and genetic data (76 FR 58868).
Within the Northwest Atlantic Ocean DPS there are five recovery units because loggerheads are a wide-ranging species, have multiple populations and varying ecological pressures, and differing threats in different parts of their range. The five recovery units include the Northern Recovery Unit, Peninsula Florida Recovery Unit, Dry Tortugas Recovery Unit, Northern Gulf of Mexico Recovery Unit, and the Greater Caribbean Recovery Unit (NMFS & USFWS 2008). Loggerhead sea turtles that nest in South Carolina fall within the Northern Recovery Unit. Conservation efforts continue across the Southeast and globally to address threats to these DPSs.
Critical Habitat - The terrestrial critical habitat areas include 88 nesting beaches in coastal counties located in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi which is approximately 1,102 kilometers (km) (685 miles (mi)) of loggerhead sea turtle nesting beaches. These beaches account for 45 percent of an estimated 2,464 km (1,531 mi) of coastal beach shoreline and approximately 84 percent of the documented nesting (numbers of nests) within these six States. More information on terrestrial critical habitat is available here: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2014-07-10/pdf/2014-15725.pdf#page=1. Marine critical habitat for the Northwest Atlantic Ocean is available here:
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/critical-habitat-loggerhead-sea-turtle#:~:text=Loggerhead%20Turtle,%2C%20and/or%20Sargassum%20habitat.
The public is also asked to report mating loggerheads and live healthy sea turtles observed in the water to SCDNR. Please follow this link to the sea turtle sighting form.
For a more comprehensive review, please read the Loggerhead Sea Turtle Conservation Sheet, Loggerhead Sea Science and Loggerhead State of the Resource.
Loggerhead sea turtle Recovery Plan second revision
Loggerhead nesting facts:- Nesting: May - August
- Adult females are greater than 87 cm curved carapace length
- Adult males are greater than 83 cm curved carapace length
- A single female may lay her nests relatively close (w/n 1 km) or far apart (400 km)
- Nocturnal nesters, alternating crawl
- Mean number of clutches per season 4.1
- Internesting interval: 12-15 days
- Remigration interval: 2.5 - 3.7 years
- Width of Crawl = 90+ cm
- Mean sizes of eggs are 4.1 cm in diameter, 33 g in mass and 36.2 cc in volume
- Clutch count 100 - 126 eggs
- Incubation duration is 42 - 75 days
- In situ hatch success is 65%