Melissa Nelson Gabriel , mnelsongab@pnj.com Published 3:08 p.m. CT Feb. 6, 2017 | Updated 7 hours ago

File image of baby sea turtles hatching.(Photo: Special to the Pensacola News Journal)Buy Photo

An environmental group is workingto bring turtle-friendly lighting to Panhandle beaches using millions of dollars in restitution money paid by oil giant BP in the aftermath of the 2010 Gulf Coast oil spill.

The Gainesville-based Sea Turtle Conservancy previously used money from the Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund to replace traditional lighting on beaches in Gulf, Franklin and Walton countieswith amber LED lights, which do not distract from natural moonlight used by nesting turtles and their hatchlings for orientation.

Stacey Marquis, a spokeswoman for the Sea Turtle Conservancy, said the program has worked well in those areas and the organization hopes to see similar success on beaches in Santa Rosa and Escambia counties.

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Conservancy employees are surveying area beaches and identifying buildings with outdated lighting.

"We are working with large condominium associations now and we hope to start identifying single-family homeowners," Marquis said.

The group has more than $1 million available to retrofit lighting along beaches from Bay county westward through Escambia County.

Sea turtles and their hatchlings rely on natural light from the moon to direct them to and from the beach. Artificial lights from beach parking lots, condominiums and other developments can overwhelm the turtles, causing them to lose their direction, Marquis said.

(Photo: Thomas St. Myer/tstmyer@pnj.com)

The environmental fund was established to compensate the public for environmental damages after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded andspewed more than 3 million barrels of oil into the Gulf in spring and summer of 2010. As part of a settlement agreement, BP and rig-owner Transocean paid more than $2.5 billion to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which directs the environmental fund. The turtlelighting project is among dozens of projects in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas paid for through the environmental fund, part of more than $20 billion paid by the oil companies in restitution for the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

Anna Clark, of the Pensacola-based environmental advocacy group Coast Watch Alliance, said the lighting project will benefit hundreds of sea turtles that make their way to Panhandle beaches for nesting eachspring and summer.

"It is a good thing," she said. "If you have the wrong type of lighting, you can distract them from the beaches where they are supposed to lay their eggs. If they don't reach the right place to nest, they are not going breed successfully," said Clark, who added that lighting is also important for the thousands of tiny hatchlings who depend on moonlight to direct them to the Gulf after they emerge from the nest.

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Clark has long advocated for more money from the BP spill to be spent on projects that directly benefit the environment.

"This is something that does that," she said. "In the past, we've seen boat ramps and tourism-related projects that were not focused on rehabilitating resources damaged in the spill."

Beach homeowners, businessesand condominium associations interested in replacing outdatedlighting can contact Stacey Marquis and the Sea Turtle Conservancy at stacey@conserveturtles.org.For more information about the program, visithttps://conserveturtles.org/beachfront-lighting-lighting-and-dune-projects/.

For more information about the Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund, visit:http://www.nfwf.org/gulf/Pages/home.aspx

(Photo: Molly Nobles)

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BP oil spill funds used for turtle friendly beach lights - Pensacola News Journal