Every morning somebody walking a dog or carrying a coffee stops me and asks what I'm doing. I love it. Here are the questions I hear the most. If you're staying at the beach for a week, please read this with your children. There's a pop quiz at the end.

What turtles nest on this beach?
Mostly loggerheads. Some summers we also get a good number of green turtles, and once in a while a leatherback, usually in the spring, early in the season.

How big are they?
A grown loggerhead has a reddish-brown shell about three feet long and can weigh two hundred to three hundred pounds. She's named for her big head, which has jaws strong enough to crunch crabs and conchs. A green turtle is about the same size or a bit bigger. She isn't green on the outside; the name comes from the color of her fat. The leatherback is the biggest turtle in the world. She can be six feet long and weigh over a thousand pounds, and instead of a hard shell she has thick, leathery skin over her back.

What do they eat?
Loggerheads eat crabs, shellfish and other animals on the bottom. Grown green turtles eat sea grass and algae. Leatherbacks eat jellyfish, which is why a plastic bag in the ocean is so dangerous to them.

When do they nest?
The Florida season runs from about May through October. Most nests are laid in May, June and July. The hatching goes on into the fall.

How does she do it?
She comes up out of the surf at night, crawls up the beach above the high tide line, and digs a body pit with all four flippers. Then she digs a deep, round egg chamber with her back flippers, one scoop at a time, lays her eggs, covers them, and throws sand around to hide the spot. It takes about an hour or more. Then she goes back to the ocean and never sees her babies.

How many eggs?
A loggerhead lays around a hundred eggs in a nest, each about the size and shape of a ping-pong ball, and leathery, not hard like a hen's egg. She usually nests several times in one summer, about two weeks apart, and then takes a year or two off before she nests again.

How long until they hatch?
About two months. Warm sand hatches them faster and cool sand slower.

Is it a boy or a girl?
That's my favorite one. It depends on the temperature of the sand while the eggs are developing. Warmer nests make more girls and cooler nests make more boys. Isn't that something?

What happens when they hatch?
The babies hatch underground and work their way up together over a few days. Then, almost always at night when the sand has cooled, they all boil up out of the sand at once and scramble for the water. Each one is only about two inches long. They find the ocean by heading for the brightest horizon, which on a dark beach is the sky over the water. That's why lights on the beach are such a problem.

Then where do they go?
They swim hard, nonstop, for about a day to get away from the shore, where so many fish and birds are waiting for them. Young loggerheads end up out in the open ocean, riding the currents and hiding in mats of floating seaweed for years before they come back toward the coast as bigger turtles.

How many make it?
Not many. The number you'll hear most often is that about one in a thousand lives to grow up. That's why every nest counts.

How long until they're grown?
A long time. A loggerhead takes decades, somewhere in the range of twenty or thirty years, to be old enough to nest. And when the females are grown, they come back to nest on the same part of the coast where they hatched. Some of the babies that leave my beach this fall may come back to it as mothers when I'm long gone. I think about that a lot.

Are they protected?
Yes. All the sea turtles that nest in Florida are protected by federal and state law. Loggerheads are listed as threatened. Leatherbacks and Florida's green turtles are listed as endangered. It's against the law to touch or bother a turtle, a nest, the eggs or the hatchlings. That's why only people with a permit work with the nests.

What's that square with the stakes and the orange tape?
A nest. Please leave it alone, and keep your dog and your children out of it. The eggs are under there.

What if I see a turtle on the beach at night?
Lucky you! Stay well back and stay low and quiet. No flashlight, no flash camera. Don't get in front of her or between her and the water. If she's still crawling, she can decide to turn around, so give her room and let her be. Just watch.

What if I see hatchlings going the wrong way?
Don't pick them up and don't put them in a bucket. Turn off any lights you can, find a lifeguard or one of the volunteers, or call the state wildlife officers. Those little flippers are working harder than you can imagine, and they need to make that crawl on their own.

Can I watch a nest hatch?
We can't tell you exactly when a nest will go, and a crowd with flashlights is the worst thing for it. If you happen to be there, stand back, stay dark and enjoy it. It's one of the most wonderful things you'll ever see.

Pop Quiz! No peeking.

1. Which turtle makes most of the nests on our beach?
2. A track with even, side-by-side flipper marks, about six feet wide. Who made it?
3. How long does a nest take to hatch?
4. Hot sand makes more boys or more girls?
5. Name two things you can do tonight to help.

Answers: 1. the loggerhead. 2. a leatherback. 3. about two months. 4. girls. 5. turn off your beach lights or close the curtains; fill your holes; take in your chairs; no flashlights; pick up your trash. (Any two of those, and you get a gold star.)