Watch a sea turtle nest get counted on Amelia Island this weekend

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Island Brief

Amelia Island • Nassau County • First Coast

Happy Friday, Nassau County! This is the one. The last weekend before the buses roll Monday morning, and the island is doing its best to complicate it. Storms are likely here after 11 this morning and again for most of Saturday, and the ocean is under a rip current statement until late Saturday night. Then Sunday turns up sunny and 87 like nothing happened. Plan around it. There is plenty going on that has nothing to do with the water.

Fernandina ⛈️ 86°/76° Yulee ⛈️ 88°/76°

Callahan ⛈️ 90°/74° Hilliard ⛈️ 90°/72°

The National Weather Service has a rip current statement up for Northeast Florida beaches from this morning through late Saturday night, so treat the surf as something to look at rather than swim in for the next two days. Today runs to 86 with a 50 percent chance of storms after 11 a.m. Saturday tops out around 85 with an 80 percent chance, most of it before 3 p.m. Sunday is the clear one: 87, mostly sunny, and only a 30 percent chance of anything in the afternoon.

🎉	This Weekend

AUG 7

Sounds on Centre Centre Street, downtown • 6 to 8 p.m. • Free outdoor concert, the first one back after the series took July off; storms are possible before 11 tonight, so it is worth a look at the sky before you load up the chairs

AUG 8

Puppy Palooza The Palace Shipyard, 117 Centre St. • 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. • Free, family and dog friendly; a DJ, food trucks, trainer demonstrations and raffles, with adoptable dogs on site from the Nassau Humane Society and Nassau County Animal Services. It benefits the Free Biscuits Foundation, which covers emergency vet bills so families do not have to surrender a pet

AUG 8

Fernandina Beach Farmers Market N. 7th Street, downtown • 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. • Rain or shine, and the rain may well test that. This is a second Saturday, so the Arts Market sets up alongside it at 506 Centre

AUG 8

Greek dinner at American Legion Post 54 626 S. 3rd Street • 5 to 7 p.m. • A $15 donation gets chicken souvlaki and tzatziki, Greek salad, lemon potatoes, spanakopita and baklava. The Auxiliary's monthly dinner is open to the public, to-go plates are available, and After Hours plays from 5 to 8

AUG 9

Acoustic Flashback with Bill Ivins Story & Song courtyard, 1430 Park Ave. • Noon to 2 p.m. • Free, no RSVP; grab lunch from the bistro and sit outside, which on Sunday is finally a reasonable idea again

🍽️

Try This

Nests are emerging all over the island right now, and Amelia Island Sea Turtle Watch does something plenty of people who live here have never gone to see. Three days after a nest empties out, permitted volunteers dig it open, count the shells and the eggs that never hatched, and carry any hatchlings still stuck down there to the water. Anyone can stand and watch, and the volunteers talk you through that particular nest's history while they work. Three are posted for this weekend: Saturday at 7:30 a.m. at beach access 40, Sunday at 7:30 a.m. just north of the Scott Beach access, and Sunday at 7 p.m. at access 2S near Main Beach. It is free, it takes about half an hour, and it is the rare beach plan that survives a rip current statement, because nobody is going in the water.

One catch worth knowing. Nobody can predict when a nest will emerge, so the list changes every single day and excavations get cancelled for weather without notice. Check it the morning you go, not the night before.

📍 Daily schedule and beach access map at ameliaislandseaturtlewatch.com • Early mornings and evenings • Free; 904-583-1913. The group logged its 215th nest of the season in late June, a pace it has hit only once in twelve years of records

📰	In Case You Missed It

Property Appraiser Kevin Lilly says updated 2026 values are posted at ncpafl.com, where you can pull up your own address and see market value, assessed value and which exemptions are on the record. Countywide taxable value came in around $19.7 billion, up 8.4 percent from last year. TRIM notices, the ones headed "Notice of Proposed Property Taxes," go in the mail on August 17. They are not bills. Each one lists the proposed millage rate for every taxing authority that touches your parcel, plus the dates and times of their budget hearings, which is where those rates actually get set.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

The Florida Supreme Court this week affirmed the death sentence for Patrick McDowell, who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the 2021 shooting of Nassau County Deputy Joshua Moyers during a traffic stop. A jury recommended death 11 to 1 in April 2024. On appeal McDowell argued that later changes to Florida's non-unanimous death penalty law should have reached his case, and that the victim impact statements from the Moyers family were unfairly emotional. The justices rejected both, finding the law already applied when he was sentenced and that such testimony is permitted when it stays with who the victim was and what the community lost. He remains on death row.

Read More → News4Jax

Pat Foster-Turley got the urge she gets most summers and drove upriver to get in the black tannic water, which is harder to do than it sounds and harder still to find a friend willing to do with you. The boat ramp under the St. George bridge was low and unwelcoming, so she kept going and found a sandy beach at St. Marys Cove near Macclenny. She points out something worth carrying around: the St. Marys is one of the cleanest rivers anywhere, running 130 miles out of the Okefenokee to the Georgia line with no industrial, agricultural or municipal runoff along the way. That reads a little differently the same week the Observer wrapped a series on Egans Creek and the Amelia River both sitting on impaired lists.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

📌	Briefly Noted

There will be adoptable dogs on Centre Street Saturday, which is as good a reason as any to ask: how did your dog end up with you? The shelter on Airport Road, a neighbor's litter, a parking lot in some other state, or one who simply turned up and declined to leave. Hit reply and let us know. We read every response.

Amelia Island's 11.5 miles of beach had already logged 215 sea turtle nests by the end of June, a pace the local watch group has seen only once in twelve years of counting. Nearly every one of those nests belongs to a single species. Which sea turtle does almost all the nesting here?

Answer: The loggerhead. Amelia Island Sea Turtle Watch has recorded at least one green turtle nest and one leatherback nest this season, both unusual here, but loggerheads account for the overwhelming majority. The females come ashore roughly every two weeks to nest four to six times across a single summer, and they do not eat the whole time.

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