About two months later, the babies hatch and make their own way to the sea. The nesting season runs from the beginning of May to the end of August, and the hatching season from about the Fourth of July to Halloween. During the entire six-month nesting and hatching season, volunteers like Katz patrol their beaches every morning. At the height of nesting season, there's usually at least one new nest every day. The nests themselves are so well covered that they're hard to spot, so monitors look for the telltale tracks left by the female.
Volunteers mark the nest with a wooden stake, placed about a yard away and labeled with the date.
Once hatching season begins, the volunteers start watching out for baby tracks as well. This information is used to determine the average clutch size and percentage of live hatchlings. Some permit holders gather other kinds of data on the turtles. For example, in addition to monitoring nests, the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota tags nesting females by attaching a noncorrosive metal tag to each front flipper. The tagging program provides valuable information about migration patterns, the number of times a turtle nests per season, and the intervals between nesting by a given turtle.