Florida is home to more than 20 million people and more than 100 million people visit the state each year. At the same time, Florida’s coastal and in-water habitats are utilized by globally-important populations of sea turtles that are vulnerable to impacts from coastal lighting, degraded water quality, hard armoring structures, vessel strikes, and other anthropogenic threats.

This dichotomy of high residential density and high sea turtle nesting density led to the need for government agencies to enact protection laws solely focused on sea turtles several decades ago. Many of these protection efforts took years of science-based advocacy, research, and education by individuals in the sea turtle community – many of whom are no longer here to tell the story of how the protection laws or policies were established.

In a state that is growing and changing so rapidly, it is important to create a record of how conservation protections for sea turtles were achieved in the past to ensure that they are understood in their historical context and can be improved upon in the future.

In 2022, Sea Turtle Conservancy (STC), with assistance from University of Florida Legal Skills Professor Emeritus Thomas T. Ankersen, created a policy history of sea turtle conservation in Florida. Full history can be found on the ArcGIS StoryMaps website, while links to individual sections can be found below.