Beachfront Lighting: Project Overview

Why retrofit beachfront lights?

At a small condominium in Destin, Florida, sea turtle nesting habitat is awash with artificial light.

Sea turtles have crawled onto beaches to nest for millions of years. It was once easy for hatchlings to find the ocean after emerging from nests because the brightest horizon was lit by the moon. Now, Florida’s coasts are lined with beachfront properties that can emit powerful, white light, which can cause sea turtles to crawl toward those lights (misorient) or crawl in circles on the beach (disorient). Based on consensus from a panel of sea turtle experts, around 100,000 sea turtle hatchlings are disoriented each year in Florida. They can end up in pools, decks, or even the road. To view an animation on what sea turtle disorientation looks like, click here.

With money from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the Sea Turtle Conservancy (STC) is working to eliminate problem beachfront lighting, and sea turtle disorientations in the Florida Panhandle. For Phase II of this project, STC is working in Bay, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa and Escambia Counties. Since 2010, STC has retrofitted lights on 161 single-family homes and condominiums, darkened more than 20 miles of beach and retrofitted thousands of bulbs and fixtures.

To quantify the brightness of a beach, STC staff takes light meter readings, measured in foot candles, before and after the lighting retrofit. At all properties retrofitted during Phase I of the NFWF grant, the amount of foot candles was reduced by 86 percent at 25 feet away from the building and 74 percent at the toe of the dune. The graph below illustrates how the amount of foot candles visible from the beach is decreased at large condominiums.

After STC retrofitted lights in Franklin County during Phase I of the NFWF grant, the amount of foot candles was reduced by 86 percent at 25 feet away from the building and 74 percent at the toe of the dune.

What is considered sea-turtle friendly lighting?

In general, a good sea turtle friendly lighting fixture directs light down to the ground where it is needed for safety, shields the light source from being visible from the beach, and is outfitted with a red or amber LED light bulb. The bulb cannot be painted or coated with an amber or red film. Sea turtle friendly lighting can be summed up with these three rules:

KEEP IT LOW – Low mounting height and low bulb wattage. Flood, spot and pole lighting are highly discouraged.
KEEP IT SHIELDED – Use full cut-off fixtures that direct the light down to the ground. Shield fixtures so you cannot see the bulb, lamp or glowing lens.
KEEP IT LONG – Sea turtles are less disturbed by the long wavelengths of light (570 nanometers or longer), such as lights that are yellow, amber, or red in color.

For examples of turtle-friendly bulbs and fixtures, visit the Turtle Friendly Lighting Examples page.