Op-Ed Columns

Know what a "nanometer" is?

Me neither. Until I looked it up and found that a nanometer is "a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one billionth of a meter."

Huh?

It "equals ten angstrom."

Oh.

And it "is the most common unit to describe the wave length of light."

Ah.

If light comes in at more than 400 nanometers, you can see it.

Unless you are a turtle.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As I have told you before, down on the Gulf Coast, well-meaning people are trying to save the sea turtle, a goal I find laudable — even if at times I find their methods a bit much.

And a bit much is what I find their latest plan.

Which is: "Turn out the lights."

I kid you not.

According to an ordinance being proposed in one Florida county, since "types of artificial lighting have a detrimental effect on sea turtle hatchlings," those types of artificial lighting need to be turned off, or covered up, or otherwise reduced to around 580 nanometers. Anything below that is OK because someone has apparently discovered that less than 580 nanometers is dark to a turtle.

I just love science.

Follow me. Mama turtle comes on shore at night and, without tents and umbrellas to hinder her (thanks to a previous ordinance), she lays her eggs. Then she goes back to the gulf and the eggs incubate until out pop the hatchlings.

Now, baby turtles have a built-in nanometer-meter that guides them to light that is 580 nanometers or more. Before people came to the beach, that light was the reflection of moon and stars on the breaking waves.

So off the hatchlings would go, into the water, to live out their days doing what turtles do or until they were eaten by some sea creature with its own built-in nanometer-meter that tells it when the gulf is just bright enough to attract supper.

Sea creatures gotta eat, too.

Today, however, the reflection of moon and stars on the water has competition from house lights, business lights, parking lot lights, street lights and pink flamingos. Ordinance folks say these lights disorient the hatchlings and they go inland, where all sorts of bad things can happen. (Worse than sea creatures?)

So save-the-turtle folks want houses and businesses along the gulf to reduce the nanometers coming from their lights so that the turtles will not be attracted upcountry.

Oh, if it were only so easy.

You see, manufacturers of most of the lights in question do not provide information as to how many nanometers the light produces, so who knows? (What a great place for the government to jump in and require General Electric and the rest to list nanometers along with watts and lumens — whatever they are — on every package of lights.)

So what is the homeowner, business owner and county streetlight folks to do?

Well, they could convert to "Turtle Safe Lighting" (TSL — no lie, it is right there in the ordinance). Buy 'em, screw 'em in, turn 'em on, good to go.

Never seen them myself, but if the ordinance passes the first guy who stocks them will make a bundle.

The ordinance people also propose a procedure called "Wildlife Lighting," which "minimizes the potential for negative affects to the nocturnal behaviors of nesting and hatchling sea turtles and other wildlife." That's "wildlife," not "wild life" — if it were the latter, then the ordinance's advice on how interruptions to "nocturnal behaviors" can be minimized takes on a whole new meaning.

All of which leads me to the unanswered question.

What about my pink flamingos?

My house is not on the beach. It is on a bluff, behind a row of houses that are on the beach. A turtle down on the beach cannot see my house or the glow from any of our lights. However, if turtles stand on their turtle-tip-toes, they might be able to see the two rope-light pink flamingos up on our deck. I plug them in to signal the neighbors that we are receiving guests and come on up.

So far, we have not been visited by a turtle.

But who knows? If they make all the folks along the beach get TSL and such, and the beach front goes dark, then the glow of our birds might be enough to attract them.

And if a turtle hatches, turns north, climbs the stairs from the beach, makes it along the walkway to the road, gets across the road and makes it up the stairs to our deck, you know what I am gonna do?

Give it a beer.

It deserves it.