Inside Highland Beach's Sea Turtle Season: What Changed, and What's Left to See
August 20, 2026
August 20, 2026
Walk North Ocean Boulevard after dinner this month and you'll notice the same thing most residents notice without quite registering it: wooden stakes poking out of the sand at irregular intervals, a strip of yellow tape here, a hand-lettered sign there. Most people who live in Highland Beach know, in a general way, that this means turtles. Fewer know that the rules governing what happens on the other side of that sand, on your patio, behind your window, from your porch fixture, were rewritten a few years ago because the town's own building official said the old version wasn't good enough.
That's the part of the story that doesn't show up in the generic version of this post. Everyone already knows Highland Beach has sea turtles. What's changed is how seriously the town now enforces the difference between a beach that looks quiet and a beach that's actually dark.
Highland Beach runs about three miles along the Atlantic, a fraction of the coastline compared to its neighbors to the north and south. Yet in 2021, state records showed the town logging more than 1,100 nests along that short stretch, more than any neighboring beach town recorded that same season, even as the overall count had begun to decline. For a town with no traffic light on A1A and almost no public beach access points, that's a strange thing to be a leader in.
It isn't strange once you think about what nesting females are actually looking for. A dark, undeveloped-feeling beach with minimal foot traffic and few points of public access is close to ideal. Highland Beach's low density and near-total absence of commercial beachfront, the very qualities that make it feel private if you live there, are the same qualities that keep drawing loggerheads back to the same three miles year after year.
For a long time, the town leaned on Florida's general model lighting guidance rather than its own specific code. That changed after a public reckoning in late 2022. At a town meeting covered by The Coastal Star, Building Official Jeff Remas didn't soften his assessment of the existing ordinance.
"This has long been overdue," Remas said, adding that the lack of specifics adds to confusion. "Our existing ordinance is pathetic."
Commissioner John Shoemaker had walked the beach himself and found bright lights still in use, some spilling over from the west side of A1A in ways that could pull hatchlings away from the water instead of toward it. His response was blunt: there was no reason the town shouldn't be converting to more turtle-friendly lighting.
By the spring of 2023, the town commission had introduced and adopted a rewritten version of Section 4-8, "Lighting Restrictions for Protection of Sea Turtles," along with Section 30-85, "Coastal Lighting." The new language spells out standards for both new construction and existing structures, something the old code never did with any precision.
If you own or rent anything within sight of the beach, the practical version of the code looks like this from March 1 through October 31:
None of this is about aesthetics. Hatchlings orient toward the brightest light source they can find, which on an undeveloped beach is moonlight reflecting off open water. Replace that with a porch lamp or a lit window and a nest's worth of two-inch turtles can end up crawling toward a driveway instead of the surf.
Those stakes you pass on a morning walk aren't placed at random. Highland Beach's Sea Turtle Program relies on trained volunteers who monitor the beach and flag new nests as they're laid, often before most residents are awake. It's a small, quiet piece of civic infrastructure that most people who live here benefit from without ever meeting the people who run it. If you find an injured or dead sea turtle, the town's guidance is to call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Wildlife Alert line at 888-404-3922 rather than approach it yourself.
If you've wanted to see any of this up close, the calendar is working against you now. Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, just south in Boca Raton at 1801 N. Ocean Blvd., ran its 2026 Turtle Walk program through Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights, but that program wrapped on July 2. What's still open, for a little longer, is the center's Hatchling Release program, running on select dates from July 13 through August 27, where staff release newborn turtles and the public can watch them make their first scramble to the water.
One detail worth knowing before you register: Gumbo Limbo's system defines "resident" pricing as anyone living within the City of Boca Raton or the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District. Highland Beach falls outside that boundary, so even though the nature center sits just a few minutes down the road, residents here register at the non-resident rate rather than assuming a Boca Raton mailing address counts.
Zoom out and the bigger number puts the whole season in context. Palm Beach County was named Sea Turtle Capital of Florida this past spring, a nod to roughly two million hatchlings born countywide each year. Highland Beach's three miles are a small slice of that total, but given the 2021 nest count, they're a slice that's been carrying more weight per mile than most of the county around it.
None of this changes what makes Highland Beach appealing day to day, the quiet, the lack of a single traffic light, the beach that still feels undeveloped even with new construction rising along A1A. What's changed is the seriousness with which the town now treats the gap between "we have turtles" and "we actually protect them." The 2023 rewrite closed a real loophole, and the next ten days are close to the last chance this year to see the payoff of that decision in person, before the hatchling releases end and the beach goes quiet again until next March.
If you're weighing a move to this stretch of coast, or you already call it home and want a clearer read on how a property's location, orientation, or renovation history intersects with rules like these, Rachel Hutchings knows this three-mile stretch block by block. Schedule a free consultation to talk through what any of it means for a specific address.
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