GULF SHORES, Ala. — It’s a process that’s been happening for millions of years.

A momma loggerhead sea turtle shuffles unto a northern Gulf Coast beach, digs a nest about two feet deep and deposits her eggs. She then covers the clutch back up with sand, camouflages the nest by smoothing the sand around it, and heads back into the Gulf.

The turtles hatch 60 to 75 days later and head toward the brightest thing around: The Gulf of Mexico.

Until humans came on the scene with all their bright lights, drawing the hatchlings in the wrong direction.

“It was the residents that noticed every year during the summer time that there were squished baby sea turtles in the road,” Turtle Czar Mike Reynolds said. “And they kept asking why, what’s going on here?”

From that question emerged the all-volunteer Share the Beach organization that tracks, monitors and helps guide the hatchlings on their way into the Gulf of Mexico.

Turtle season begins again May 1 and the nesting season lasts through July 31. Nest monitoring continues into October. And volunteers to walk the beach looking for the telltale signs of the momma’s crawl are needed once again. To volunteer visit sharethebeach.com and click on the volunteering button on upper lefthand side of the page.

“Our purpose here is to help protect sea turtles,” Reynolds said. “The most important property that we protect is the baby sea turtles.”

And even though this ancient reproductive cycle was being carried out before humans came on the scene, humans are now a vital part of it here on Alabama’s beaches through Share the Beach.

“This is all a natural process and we wish that the beaches were perfectly dark and we didn’t have to go inject ourselves into something that’s been going on for millions of years,” Reynolds said. “But we do. That’s the reality of it.”

But, Reynolds said, the group works under the guidelines set up with the help of federal scientists from the Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge.

“We’re going to do it properly,” he said. “We have a wonderful protocol written by Jeremy Phillips and the people out at the Bon Secour Refuge, the staff out there. In following those protocols we are able to do enough to make a difference.”

There are factors beyond the control of the volunteers, but Reynolds and Share the Beach have identified the areas they can help in and have been quite proficient during the years.

“We can’t to everything, we can’t stop storms, we can’t stop nature and we can’t stop the fish that eat the turtles once they get into the water,” he said. “There are just things we can’t change. But increasing the success rate of getting the turtles from the beach down to the water is enough. We will have made a difference.”

Enough of a difference that more than 7,100 hatchlings, a record number, made their way into the Gulf with the help of Share the Beach. The 108 hatchings is another record as is the total number of nests for a season, 149.

“Of those nests, we lost some to storms,” Reynolds said. “The total number of eggs was 11,400 and we managed to get 7, 508 hatchlings and 7,159 of those in the water. That gave us a 62.4 success rate.

“We are making a difference and by you showing up here tonight we will again make a difference in the turtle hatching of this season.”

Reynolds was speaking to a full house Thursday at the season-opening volunteer meeting at the Gulf Shores Adult Activity Center.

“Twelve years ago we had like 30 people here and you know it was a small crowd, but look at this,” he said. “This is fabulous.”

The goal was to get volunteers from the crowded house to once again hit the beaches just before dawn to look for turtle crawls to make a difference again this year in the turtles’ successful hatchings.

“What we do is very simple,” he said. “We get up in the morning before sun up and we walk the beach looking for where the momma sea turtles come ashore and lay their nests.”

Beating the tourists to the beach is motivation behind the early morning wake up.

“Our vacationers seem oblivious that there are tracks in the sand and they’ll walk right over them,” Reynolds said. “And since they are made out of sand they’ll just trample right over them and we’ll never find them.”