Loggerhead sea turtles are in a ``dire state,'' with a 40 percent decline in the number of nests counted over the past decade, experts say.

Florida, home to 90 percent of loggerhead nests in the U.S., saw the fourth-worst nesting season on record in 2009, when the number dropped 15 percent, according to the environmental group Oceana.

Scientists at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, who count turtle nests every year on the city's s beaches, can attest to the plunge: Two of the past three years yielded record low counts.

``We're finally getting below 400 nests, which is scary,'' said Kirt Rusenko, a marine conservationist at the center. ``When I first started here 14 years ago, our nest number was more like 900.''

Loggerheads, which hatch from eggs the size of ping pong balls on beaches from Texas to North Carolina, can typically grow shells three feet long and live to be 50 to 60 years old.

Listed as ``threatened'' in 1978 under the Endangered Species Act, loggerheads have continued to struggle under the onslaught of beachfront development and commercial fishing.

As tiny hatchlings, they tend to shuffle their way into the ocean by following the glimmer of stars and moonlight -- so long as they are not led astray by onshore lights. Beach erosion, which is often made worse by seawalls and development along shorelines, leaves the turtles with a smaller area in which they can nest.

Hatchlings that survive the crawl to sea face further peril from longline fishing, which involves cables strung with hooks that can snare the turtles. Improved techniques and tighter regulations have helped reduce the fishing industry's impact on turtles, say experts, although the practice remains the leading threat.

Oceana, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Turtle Island Restoration Network are awaiting the federal government's response to their petition to boost protections for loggerhead turtles by reclassifying them from threatened to endangered and creating areas of critical habitat -- all of which could make make building along certain shorelines more difficult for developers.

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