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Wow! What a turtle Year!
The 2006/2007 turtle nesting season was an amazing time. We had our first nest laid on the 30th of October, and had turtles nesting almost every night of the season right through until May!!
Most years on Lady Elliot we have around 50 Green turtles nesting with a few Loggerheads as well. The Green turtles seemed to think that the conditions were favourable and were nesting in higher than normal numbers, we had around 75 turtles nesting.
Turtles don't just nest once every season, they will nest between 6-9 times with about 14 days in between each nesting. So that adds up to about 500 nests around the Island!!
Mostly the turtles will nest at night time, coming up onto the beach 2 hours either side of high tide. Sometimes they have a very strong urge to lay their eggs however and we had a very eager Loggerhead nesting during the day on Christmas Day!
In the thousands of hatchlings that ran down the beach or were rescued from inside their nests under coral we found one that was very unique, a beautiful Albino turtle hatchling, we named her (? We don"t really know if it was a girl!) "Ellie” and released her off into the ocean to hopefully come back in 30 years time!!
Our turtle hatchlings were the stars of the show right through the year until the 7th July when our last nest emerged after a 14 week incubation!!
Marine turtles don't nest every year, it requires a lot of energy and they lose about 1/3 of their body weight over the nesting season, they need between 2-6 years in between nesting to build up their body fat again. So this year on Lady Elliot we expect a very quiet season.
To give you an idea of quiet it is for Green turtles nesting this year, one of the major nesting areas on the Queensland coast is Raine Island in the far north…they had 24000 turtles nesting per night last year and this year they have just 40 per night!!
Luckily for us the Loggerhead numbers are normal and so far we have 3 Loggerhead turtles nesting and keeping the beaches busy!!
The first nesting for this season was a Loggerhead turtle on the 3rd December. The eggs incubate in the sand for ~8 weeks so we are expecting the first little hatchlings around the 3rd February. This is an amazing spectacle to watch hundreds of turtles emerge from the nest and scurry down the beach to start their life at sea.
In the waters surrounding Lady Elliot we have a large number of resident turtles and it is common to see turtles when you head out for a snorkel, In fact it"s rare not to see them!!!
So while we don’t have as many nesting as last year it is certainly worthwhile to head out onto the beach at high tide at night or into the water for a swim and have an encounter with these amazing creatures.
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publication: LEI News
author: Jenni Fox
date: 21/1/2008
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