Sea turtle nesting season is here: Watch baby turtles emerge from their nests

As one Palm Beach Post reporter once wrote: A National Geographic moment occurs every summer night on a Palm Beach County beach near you. And it’s something few Floridians ever see. A sea turtle – sometimes dozens of them – lumbers onto a beach to lay her eggs in an act unchanged for more than 25 million years.

Like every season before, the time has come for female turtles to exit the surf to enact a primordial ritual on the same beach where they were likely born more than 25 years ago. They will be there night after night.

Five Florida counties — Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie, Martin and Palm Beach — are the most important loggerhead nursery areas in the Western Hemisphere according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

During sea turtle nesting season, a Palm Beach city law requires oceanfront property owners to make sure their lights aren’t visible from the beach until nesting season ends Oct. 31. The measure was put in place to protect the female sea turtles who will waddle their way onto the town’s beaches, leaving behind them nests filled with eggs bearing the next generation of green, leatherback and loggerhead turtles.

Here are some interesting things to know about sea turtle nesting season in Palm Beach County.

Where do sea turtles nest?

Three species of sea turtles — green, leatherback and loggerhead — nest on beaches along Florida’s east coast. Female turtles look for dark, quiet beaches when laying eggs.

What can Palm Beach County residents do to help?

The biggest thing to remember during sea turtle nesting season: Adjust your lighting if you live near the beach. Palm Beach's “lights out” rules require oceanfront properties to “shield or redirect any artificial lights illuminating an area of the beach or water that may be used by nesting sea turtles and hatchlings, or simply turn off the lights during the period of March 1st through October 31st,” the town said in a news release.

Here is more information about sea turtle nesting season.

Greg Lovett is a photojournalist covering all of Palm Beach County for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at glovett@pbpost.com. You can follow his visual work on social media at @greglovettphotography on Instagram.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Baby sea turtles emerge from nests, how they are protected in Florida