Abstract
Understanding which environmental conditions are favored or disfavored by nesting sea turtles will ultimately aid in their conservation by allowing conservation programs to collect biological data from nesting sea turtles, tag sea turtles to better understand migration patterns on multiple scales, and recommend reducing light and noise pollution during certain hours of certain nights to increase nesting attempts and reduce false crawls. In this study, C. caretta nesting attempts were more common one to two hours after a major rain event ended. High tides and increasing water levels were negatively correlated with nesting attempts. Higher temperatures were associated with less nesting activity and more false crawls. Wind velocity had a positive correlation with nesting attempts when analyzed using hourly data and a negative correlation to nesting attempts when analyzed using nightly average data. Occasionally there were high wind gusts overnight that were recorded for a single hour and inflated the nightly average. Moon phase, moon luminosity, and time as each hour of the night had no correlation to nesting attempts. The most intriguing finding was the correlation to precipitation for C. caretta in which was previously unknown and can act as a basis for future research into the role of sand moisture content in sea turtle nesting attempts.