I was super lucky to head to Mon Repos Turtle Centre in March 2021 to watch loggerhead hatchlings crawl into the ocean!
Their mumma would have laid a clutch on this beach a couple of months earlier, and that night the little buddies emerged. A clutch contains about 100 eggs, and there’s about a 70% egg success rate at Mon Repos because of their conservation program.
The babes have to crawl across the beach and make contact with the sand because that helps them configure their magic magnetic turtle GPS that will help them find their way back here when it’s their turn to nest in 30 years.
Obviously they only nest if they are lady turtles: their sex is determined by the temperature at which the eggs were incubated.
As soon as they hatch, they swim towards the East Australian Current to go on a 15-year gap year to South America. It’ll take them about 5 or 6 days to reach the EAC.
Apparently only 1 in 1000 sea turtles make it to maturity. Apart from natural predators, plastic pollution and fisheries are the big killers. Light pollution from cities close to where they hatch is also a big problem, because they get confused and lose their way to the ocean.
My husband and I were lucky enough to shine torches in the direction of the ocean to help them find their way (I think it’s normally reserved for kids, but they let us do it too). One of them got distracted and tickled my foot on its way to start its life. It was the best.
10/10 turtles, well done.