Sea Turtles in Miami — Miami, Florida

Miami-Dade County's Atlantic-facing shoreline is a documented nesting habitat for three federally protected sea turtle species — loggerhead (Caretta caretta), green (Chelonia mydas), and leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) — monitored continuously by the county's Sea Turtle Conservation Program (STCP). The STCP, a unit within Miami-Dade Parks, surveys more than 19 miles of county beach daily from March through October each year, marking and monitoring nests and submitting data to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and federal agencies. All five sea turtle species documented nesting in Florida are listed as either threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act of 1973, as the FWC documents.

The program's work takes place along the barrier-island beaches east of Miami proper — primarily the Atlantic-facing coastline that includes Miami Beach and Haulover Park — where sandy shores provide suitable nesting substrate for females returning from open ocean. The county's governance structure situates the STCP within Miami-Dade Parks, operating under FWC Marine Turtle Permit authorization, as described on the county's official program page. Sea turtle conservation in Miami-Dade thus bridges city, county, state, and federal jurisdictions across a coastline that also accommodates one of the most densely developed urban waterfronts in the southeastern United States.

The Miami-Dade County Sea Turtle Conservation Program was established in 1980, following the discovery of disoriented hatchlings along the A1A corridor in Miami Beach. According to the Pelican Harbor Seabird Station, before the STCP's founding, sea turtle nesting in Miami-Dade County was entirely undocumented. The program emerged from a collaboration between the Miami-Dade Parks Department and the FWC in the years following the implementation of the federal Endangered Species Act of 1973.

STCP staff operate under FWC Marine Turtle Permit MTP-25-150, as cited by the Pelican Harbor Seabird Station, which grants authorization to handle sea turtles and manage nests along county beaches. The program's daily survey protocol covers 19 miles of Atlantic shoreline from March through October — the months that encompass both the nesting season (April 1 through October 31) and the critical window for hatchling emergence. Biologists mark nests, gather biological data, and report results to local, state, and federal agencies through FWC's Statewide Nesting Beach Survey (SNBS) and Index Nesting Beach Survey (INBS) programs.

The Parks Foundation of Miami-Dade documents that in the 2023 season the STCP surveyed 702 sea turtle nests — a 5% increase from the 2022 total — responded to 60 sea turtle strandings, and coordinated 33 community events that engaged more than 3,500 participants. The program also conducts public education on the hazards of artificial lighting on nesting beaches, per the county's official program description.

Three sea turtle species regularly nest on Miami-Dade beaches, as documented in the FWC Statewide Atlas of Sea Turtle Nesting Occurrence and Density. The loggerhead is the most frequently recorded nesting species along this stretch of coastline. Green turtles constitute approximately 5% of nesting turtles in Miami-Dade County, according to the Pelican Harbor Seabird Station. Leatherbacks, the largest of the three, also nest on county beaches, though their numbers are lower than those of loggerheads and greens. Two additional species — Kemp's ridley and hawksbill — are documented as occasional nesters elsewhere in Florida, per the FWC atlas, though neither is a regular presence on Miami-Dade's primary survey beaches.

All three species nesting in Miami-Dade are listed under the Endangered Species Act: loggerheads and green turtles as threatened, leatherbacks as endangered, as the FWC monitoring program describes. Florida as a whole hosts the largest loggerhead nesting aggregation in the Northwest Atlantic, according to FWC, which gives Miami-Dade's portion of that coastline statewide and international ecological significance.

Nesting females typically emerge from the ocean at night between April and July to excavate nest chambers above the high-tide line. Hatchlings emerge approximately 60 days later and orient toward the brightest horizon — a behavior that evolved before artificial lighting existed on coastlines — making beachside lighting one of the most documented threats to hatchling survival in the county.

Artificial lighting on and near nesting beaches is the primary regulatory focus of local sea turtle protection efforts in the Miami metro area. The City of Miami Beach, which occupies the barrier island immediately east of the City of Miami and whose seven-mile beachfront lies within the STCP's survey zone, has maintained a Turtle Nesting Protection Ordinance for more than 18 years. On October 30, 2024, the Miami Beach City Commission adopted a significant update to that ordinance, according to the city's official press release. The updated ordinance extends protections beyond beachside fixtures to include lights visible from the beach, establishes interior lighting standards for hotels and commercial properties fronting the shoreline, and restricts fireworks displays to offshore barges — a change that addresses light scatter over nesting and hatchling emergence zones.

The City of Miami Beach Environment and Sustainability program documents that artificial light disorientation causes hatchlings to move away from the ocean rather than toward it, a documented cause of hatchling mortality. The nesting season during which these restrictions apply runs April 1 through October 31.

At the county level, the regulatory picture has a documented gap. The Sea Turtle Space Coast organization notes that Miami-Dade is the only county in South Florida that does not have a county-wide lighting ordinance, making individual municipal regulations — such as Miami Beach's updated ordinance — the primary enforceable instrument for beach lighting outside of state and federal law. The STCP itself conducts public education on artificial lighting hazards as part of its county-level program, as described on the Miami-Dade County STCP page.

The most significant regulatory action of the past two years occurred on October 30, 2024, when the Miami Beach City Commission adopted an updated Turtle Nesting Protection Ordinance. The update — described in detail in the city's official documentation — extended the ordinance's scope to cover lights visible from the beach, added interior lighting requirements for beachside commercial properties, and limited fireworks to offshore barges. The Sea Turtle Space Coast organization characterized the update as particularly significant given the absence of a county-wide lighting framework across Miami-Dade.

In 2023, the Parks Foundation of Miami-Dade provided funding for Miami-Dade County's first-ever World Sea Turtle Day event, held as a community beach cleanup at Haulover Park — one of the beaches within the STCP's daily survey corridor. That same season, STCP staff recorded 702 nests and responded to 60 stranding events, both figures representing continued active monitoring across the county's Atlantic shoreline.

At the statewide level, the FWC's 2025 Index Nesting Beach Survey data documented that loggerhead turtles had a notably productive 2025 nesting season, with more than 50,000 nests recorded on Florida's 27 core index beaches — totals comparable to levels last seen in the 1990s. Miami-Dade's survey beaches are among the index sites contributing to this statewide count.

Miami-Dade County sits within the broader South Florida nesting corridor that stretches along the Atlantic coast from Palm Beach County south through Broward and Miami-Dade. The FWC documents that Florida hosts the largest loggerhead sea turtle nesting aggregation in the Northwest Atlantic, giving the state — and by extension its densely developed southeastern coast — disproportionate conservation significance relative to global loggerhead populations.

The FWC administers two parallel monitoring frameworks that apply to Miami-Dade beaches: the Statewide Nesting Beach Survey (SNBS) and the Index Nesting Beach Survey (INBS). Miami-Dade STCP staff submit their annual nest counts and biological data through these programs, integrating local counts into Florida's long-running dataset that extends back to 1989, as shown in the FWC beach survey totals archive.

Among Miami-Dade's 34 incorporated municipalities — as documented by Miami-Dade County — Miami Beach is the municipality with the longest Atlantic beachfront and the most developed sea turtle ordinance framework. Neighboring Broward County to the north and Monroe County to the south each maintain their own conservation programs and lighting regulations, forming a patchwork of local protections supplemented by state and federal ESA enforcement.

The Miami-Dade STCP coordinates community outreach as an integral part of its conservation mandate. In 2023 alone, the program ran 33 public events reaching more than 3,500 participants, according to the Parks Foundation of Miami-Dade. The first county-sponsored World Sea Turtle Day event, held at Haulover Park in 2023, was funded through the Parks Foundation and took the form of a community beach cleanup — a format that combined habitat maintenance with public education.

The Pelican Harbor Seabird Station, located in Miami, hosts a public speaker series on sea turtle biology and conservation and conducts sea turtle rescue and stranding response operations on a year-round basis. The station is one of the primary entities responding to stranded or injured sea turtles along the county's coastline, complementing the STCP's in-field monitoring with hands-on rehabilitation capacity.

Residents and beachgoers who observe a sea turtle stranding or disoriented hatchling are directed by the Miami-Dade County STCP to contact the FWC wildlife hotline, as noted on the county's STCP program page. Beach lighting on nesting beaches during the April 1 through October 31 season is governed by the City of Miami Beach's Turtle Nesting Protection Ordinance as updated in October 2024, with the STCP providing parallel public education on lighting practices across unincorporated county areas where no equivalent municipal ordinance exists.