Tybee News Staff

Tybee stands to enhance its reputation for turtle conservation if the federal government approves its application to take part in a “Gateway Lighting” pilot project.

City Council gave city staff the go-ahead in September to apply for the U.S. Department of Energy project by which Light Energy Diode, or LED, lighting would be placed on the light poles at the end of streets to the beach and along beach parking lots. With the use of filtered lenses, color would range from both ends of the spectrum, from blue at the high end and amber at the lower, said Debbie Bell of Hubbell Lighting Co., Greenville, S.C.
Amber represents the higher color temperature and blues the cooler, Bell explained.

Bell is working on the project with the city, Georgia Power, the state Department of Natural Resources and the Tybee Island Marine Science Center. Hubbell would erect the lighting at no cost to the city and leave it in place after the study, should the city decide to keep it.  

The lighting would be up during the early May to late October loggerhead hatching season. Department of Energy scientists would monitor whether the lighting alters the migration of the hatchlings to the sea, Bell said.

“They’d want to see if it changes their patterns.”  

Visits by the scientists and turtle conservation experts during the pilot project would raise Tybee’s profile as a turtle-protection area, Bell and other supporters of the project say.

Tybee’s mix of a turtle-protection zones and commercial and residential zones makes it a good location for the pilot project, Bell said. “This would allow us to see if we can use the LED products in all of the zones. We want to see if it can be kind of a one-size-fits-all.”

With that knowledge, said Bell, her company could market the lighting to other coastal cities that now rely on a variety of lighting sources for turtle conservation.

Light Emitting Diode lighting has been around about 20 years. So far its success in turtle protection has been mixed, according to Bell. “We’ve had some success and, quite honestly, we’ve had some failures.”

But the “real life” application provided by the Gateway demonstration project could go a long way toward proving LED lightings’ worth as a turtle conservation tool, Bell added.

Councilman Charlie Brewer is enthusiastic about the project’s potential. No additional lighting would be put up, he emphasized, and he noted it gives the city an opportunity for free replacement of its lighting on the beach-end streets and beach parking areas.

But more important, “it gives us an opportunity to improve lighting that’s visible from the beach,” said Brewer, who worked with LED lighting as an outdoor lighting manager with Georgia Power.

If the LED shows promise in keeping turtle hatchlings from wandering away from the sea after leaving their nests, the lighting use could be expanded to commercial areas and condominiums and houses along the beach, Brewer said.  

The lighting has a colored lens that gives it a brownish glow, he said, and he noted the state Department of Natural Resources had the LED lighting erected on the Sidney Lanier Bridge in Brunswick.

The Department of Natural Resources says surveys indicate the loggerhead turtle population is declining at about 1.2 percent annually.
This year nests on Tybee declined significantly, going from the usual seven to 11 to just two, said Maria Procopio, executive director of the Marine Science Center. “We were really down,” she said in a recent interview.

It’s unclear whether the lower nest count can be attributed to recent renourishment of the beach, Procopio added.

But even with fewer nests, there’s a lot of concern over lighting that draws hatchlings from their nests to beach parking lots and the highway after they mistake the lights for the shimmering glow of the sea at night, she said.

Light is shining on the beach at night from “every imaginable source,” including street poles, porches, businesses and hotels, she added.
The Marine Science Center has been working with the state Department of Natural Resources to use GIS data to track the nesting patterns of loggerheads on Tybee, according to Procopio.

The GIS tracking will also give an opportunity to further determine the relationship of nesting locations and habits to lighting sources, she said.
Procopio said in a recent interview she had not talked in detail with Bell and others about the lighting study. She noted, however, that it would be “wonderful” to gather more data on how specific lighting sources impact turtle nesting.