With coronavirus lockdowns limiting travel and leisure activities, beaches in many parts of the world are empty.

That could be good news for sea turtles heading into their annual nesting season.

"The hazards to sea turtles during nesting season, a lot of it is human impact," Bette Zirkelbach, who manages the Sea Turtle Hospital in Marathon, Florida, told weather.com on Thursday. "It does not take long for nature to take back, and with having less human population, it's definitely going to affect it."

Weather in your inbox

Forecast Location

Sign Up

By signing up you agree to the Terms & Privacy Policy. Unsubscribe at any time.

That human impact includes things like chairs and trash left on the beach and holes dug in the sand, which become obstacles for both hatchlings and nesting females, as well as lights from nearby homes, hotels and vacation rentals, which can confuse hatchlings crawling to the ocean.

(WATCH: Coronavirus Lockdowns Cause Air Pollution to Drop in U.S. Cities)

Sea turtle nesting varies slightly by location, but generally runs from spring through fall on the U.S. East Coast. Nearly 90% of nesting takes place in Florida, up and down both sides of the peninsula.

Some 97,000 nests were counted statewide in 2017, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Last year, Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota counted more than 5,000 nests in a single 30-mile or so stretch from Longboat Key to Venice, on the state's Gulf Coast.

Most of the nesting turtles are loggerheads. Green turtles and leatherback turtles also nest in Florida, as well as the occasional hawksbill and Kemp's ridley. All are classified as threatened or endangered species.

It's too early in the season to know for sure how or if fewer beachgoers will affect turtle nesting and hatchlings, and no one knows how long beach closures and other restrictions will last.

Justin Perrault, director of research at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, Florida, is working on a study that suggests turtles are more likely to nest on less-crowded beaches, versus doing a "false crawl," where they turn around and go back in the water without laying eggs.

"What we find is fewer humans leads to turtles successfully nesting, as opposed to [the turtles] turning around and going to the water," Perrault told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Shanon Gann, sea turtle program manager at Brevard Zoo Sea Turtle Healing Center in Melbourne, Florida, spent nine years tracking turtle nests on the empty beaches of the nearby Kennedy Space Center. Gann said fewer people definitely means less trash and holes on the beach, but one season isn't likely to have a big impact.

Light pollution and microplastics are an ongoing threat, Gann told weather.com.

"A lot of those problems are persistent problems that have been going on for a long time," she said. "If we as good stewards of the land don’t stop using those single-use plastics and we don’t consider the impacts of us turning off our lights, those are the bigger impacts."

For the latest coronavirus information in your county and a full list of important resources to help you make the smartest decisions regarding the disease, check out our dedicated COVID-19 page.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.