Environmental Group Says Rare Sea Turtles Threatened By Dredging On Georgia Coast

Georgia Recorder

July 13, 2022

Environmentalists are on high alert this summer as endangered loggerhead sea turtles that lay eggs on Georgia beaches could face the threats of dredging in the warmer nesting season for the first time in decades.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is considering an August start for a month-long removal of about 1 million cubic yards of debris and other material in the Brunswick Harbor to make it easier for cargo ships to maneuver through the channel.

The summer opportunity is now open after the Corps completed a revised environmental assessment that found that the hopper dredging technique it uses does not pose a significant threat to the surrounding ecosystem. Georgia is home to five species of sea turtles, including loggerheads, who were on the way to being wiped out in early 2000s.

But the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service accuse the Corps of flawed analysis that doesn’t reflect the severity of the threat to sea turtles. State environmental analysts predict an 87% loss of loggerhead population over a three-year period based on the maximum number of loggerheads allowed to be killed by dredging around the south Atlantic coast.

Catherine Ridley, sea turtle project coordinator for the One Hundred Miles coastal environmental group, said the Corps conducted its required study last winter before turtle nesting season. But as the temperature warmed the sea in the spring, turtles became victims of the vacuum like suction used to capture weeds and other sediment.

The threat is looming large as this year’s loggerheads nesting season on the Georgia coast could surpass the state’s 2019 record of 4,000 eggs, Ridley said.

“It’s really the worst possible time to be doing this on just a few weeks’ notice,” she said. “We’re really wanting to get the word out to let people know what’s at stake here.

“We’re calling on everyone who loves Georgia’s sea turtles to speak out,” Ridley said. “That includes all of the thousands of people who have submitted comments in the past. And particularly, Georgia’s state agencies and our elected representatives, we need to hear from them.”

Over the course of several days in March, a dredger in the Brunswick channel killed four extremely rare Kemp’s ridley turtles. During a subsequent trip to the harbor around Charleston, South Carolina, the Corps shutdown the dredging as the number of Kemp’s turtles that had been killed neared the annual legal limit of 18 along the south Atlantic coast.

The Army Corps is proceeding with year-round dredging and harbor maintenance plans in the Brunswick, Savannah and King’s Bay channels, to advance plans to deepen and widen Georgia’s harbors to accommodate larger cargo ships.

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