A Hurricane Swept These Tortoises Across Miles of Ocean to a New Home in Florida—and Now, They’re Thriving Park rangers say at least 84 gopher tortoises are now living at Fort de Soto Park near St. Petersburg. Prior to Hurricane Helene in September, the local population was around eight Gopher tortoises are disappearing from Florida, primarily because of habitat destruction that's often tied to residential development. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission via Flickr under CC BY-ND 2.0 When Hurricane Helene swept through the southeastern United States in September 2024, the storm caused catastrophic damage and nearly 250 deaths. But a rare bright spot has emerged amid the destruction. Dozens of threatened gopher tortoises have taken up residence at Fort de Soto Park near St. Petersburg, Florida, after presumably being swept more than two miles across open water during the storm. Before the hurricane, the 1,136-acre park was home to roughly eight of the land-dwelling reptiles. Now, their population has ballooned to at least 84 individuals—and counting. The creatures seem to be adapting well to their new home, too. Park rangers have spotted them burrowing, roaming around and even mating. Gopher tortoises live on land and are not strong swimmers—which is why park rangers were so surprised when dozens of them began washing up at Fort de Soto Park. Where had the tortoises come from? And how did they survive the journey? The tortoises seemed disoriented at first but eventually made themselves at home by digging burrows. Anna Yu To answer that first question, park rangers only had to look at the reptiles’ shells. They found tiny holes that had been drilled by biology students tracking gopher tortoise populations on Egmont Key, an island located more than two miles away. Since 1994, researchers had used the drill marks to identify hundreds of individual tortoises. During Hurricane Helene, then, the tortoises living on Egmont Key must have been swept out to sea. They were probably sheltering several feet underground in their burrows when the storm surge ripped off the top layer of sand and vegetation—and took the animals with it. “This speaks to the real force that this hurricane had,” says Jeffrey Goessling, a biologist at Eckerd College, to Fox13’s Kailey Tracy. The tortoises, he adds, probably went through a “pretty harrowing couple of hours.” They likely survived by holding onto rafts of debris or simply floating atop the waves. The tortoises came from Egmont Key, where researchers have been conducting population tracking studies. The scientists marked the tortoises by drilling small holes in their shells, as shown here. Anna Yu “We think that a combination of some potential to float or swim, we did have massive amounts of debris that came over from Egmont Key, it’s entirely possible that they rode those debris rafts over,” says Dave Harshbarger, the park’s manager, to Bay News 9’s Jeff Van Sant. These types of “natural dispersal” events are relatively common among plants and animals. Other examples include dandelion seeds being carried on the breeze or coral gametes being pushed along by ocean currents. “Tortoises are really good at dispersing over water—and it probably is part of their success as a group that they’ve dispersed this way,” says Peter Meylan, the biologist at Eckerd College who led the Egmont Key tortoise population tracking research, to the Tampa Bay Times’ Max Chesnes. Unfortunately, the terrestrial reptiles didn’t all make it across the water: Rangers also found the remains of more than 40 dead tortoises on the park’s beaches after the hurricane. The population of gopher tortoises at Fort de Soto Park has ballooned since Hurricane Helene. Anna Yu When the survivors made landfall at Fort de Soto, park rangers said they initially seemed disoriented and confused. But eventually, they started settling in and digging burrows. Park rangers and researchers are now keeping tabs on them using several motion-activated cameras. The tortoises seem to be digging their burrows at higher elevations than normal. One made its home roughly 30 feet above sea level, at the top of the park’s historic military fort, and others dug their burrows above Helene’s storm surge level. “It’s like they knew exactly where to go, they went a little bit higher in hopes of not being drowned out by another storm,” says park ranger Anna Yu to the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe. Gopher tortoises (Gopherus polyphemus) live throughout the southeast, including in Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida. Measuring 9 to 11 inches long as adults, they have tannish-brown shells and shovel-like front legs that are covered in scales. In the wild, their typical lifespan is 40 to 60 years, though they can live to be more than 90 in captivity. The species is listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in the part of their range that’s located west of the Mobile and Tombigbee Rivers in Alabama; the state of Florida also lists gopher tortoises as “threatened.” Their numbers have dwindled—and are now between 700,000 and 800,000, per the Florida Wildlife Federation—as humans develop more of their habitat, often to build residential neighborhoods. Gopher tortoises are land-dwelling reptiles, so park rangers were initially puzzled when they started showing up on the beach, seemingly from the ocean. Anna Yu As their name suggests, these tortoises spend most of their time in large burrows that are usually 15 feet long and 6.5 feet deep. Burrows provide stable year-round temperatures for these cold-blooded creatures, as well as protection from predators, fire and drought. More than 350 other species use the tortoises’ burrows, too—including owls, snakes and frogs—so their expanded presence at Fort De Soto is also good news for the other critters that live there. “Everybody in the ecosystem benefits from gopher tortoises being there, and we’ll hopefully see an increase in biodiversity in the park,” Yu tells the Guardian. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.