GEORGIA COUNTED A RECORD 4,292 LOGGERHEAD NESTS.
The 2026 count was the highest in Georgia’s statewide record. The long-run nesting trend has risen about 4% a year since the early 1990s.
Georgia’s loggerhead nesting season set a statewide record: 4,292 nests in 2026. The count caps a decades-long climb from 358 nests in 2004, powered by daily beach patrols, nest protection and patient monitoring.
WHAT HAPPENED
The Georgia Sea Turtle Cooperative says monitors counted 4,292 loggerhead nests during the 2026 season, the highest total since statewide surveys began in 1989. The previous low point was 358 nests in 2004. Since the early 1990s, Georgia’s long-run nesting trend has increased by about 4% a year.
That result is the accumulation of unglamorous work. Roughly 200 volunteers, researchers and agency staff patrol Georgia beaches during nesting season, mark and protect nests, move nests at immediate risk, and record outcomes. The number is a nest count—not a count of individual turtles—and annual totals naturally swing. Researchers still describe an average of about 5,000 nests a year as the threshold for a securely recovered population.
WHY THIS IS HOPESLOP
A recovery measured in decades can be hard to see while it is happening. Georgia’s beaches now hold more than eleven times as many loggerhead nests as they did at the 2004 low. The work did not arrive as one miracle. It arrived one dawn patrol, one protected nest and one season of consistent data at a time.
ORIGINAL SOURCEThe Current / Georgia DNRRead the original report
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