Green Sea Turtle Season in Tortuguero
Every year thousands of sea turtles crawl ashore in the moonlight to nest on the shores of Tortuguero. Local legend says the turtles follow the path of the giant turtle, Tortuguero Hill, an extinct volcano that looms outside the village.
read more closeEvery year thousands of sea turtles crawl ashore in the moonlight to nest on the shores of Tortuguero. Local legend says the turtles follow the path of the giant turtle, Tortuguero Hill, an extinct volcano that looms outside the village.
Green sea turtle nesting season begins around July 1 and ends September 30 attracting people from all over the world to come and watch as the turtles perform their nesting ritual.
Only seven species of sea turtles exist in the world. Of those seven, four different species visit Tortuguero; the leatherback, loggerhead, hawksbill and the green sea turtle, making Tortuguero Beach the largest sea turtle nesting site in the western Atlantic Ocean.
The green sea turtle comes ashore more frequently than the other three species nesting in Tortuguero from July 1 to September 30. The world’s largest sea turtle, the leatherback, nests in Tortuguero from March 1 through June 30. The hawksbill sea turtles, renowned for their decorative shells, come ashore in even smaller numbers from March through October; August is the peak month. Loggerhead turtles come in fewer numbers, most often during May and August.
Nesting Green Sea Turtles
After travelling thousands of miles from as far away as Florida and Venezuela, green sea turtles return to Tortuguero to lay their eggs. After landing on shore, they probe the sand, looking for a place to make their nest. Sometimes, they crawl out of the surf, water glittering off their shells, only to turn back and scout for a better location.
When they're ready, they crawl up the beach. Using one flipper at a time, they pull themselves through the sand leaving behind long smooth tracks. At the top of the beach, the turtles begin to dig a crater in the sand using all four flippers. Then they carve out the egg chamber with their back flippers and fall into a trance. While in this hypnotic state, they lay approximately a hundred soft, white eggs.
Nighttime nesting tours along Tortuguero Beach reach their climax as visitors watch these sea turtles, which nest only every two to four years after reaching sexual maturity at age 35, lay their eggs. Guides shine red flashlights near the turtle's back flippers so that visitors can watch as the momma turtles lay their eggs. When the turtles finish, they churn the sand with their back flippers so that the eggs fit snuggly together underneath. Afterwards, the turtles toss sand in every direction to camouflage the nest and crawl back into the ocean. The turtles will come back to lay eggs two to five times each nesting migration, visiting the beach about every 14 days.
Hatching Green Sea Turtles
Today the people of Tortuguero know it's not Tortuguero Hill that attracts the turtles, it's the sand, the salt and the sea water. In the first few hours after hatching, baby turtles lay in the sand near the top of the nest waiting for the weather to cool and the light to reflect off the ocean. During this time, they learn the chemical composition of the beach, a unique signature different from anywhere else in the world that the turtles remember for the rest of their lives.
When the turtles are ready and the light is just right – usually after dawn or before dusk – they scamper toward the ocean, hurdling driftwood and crawling over miniature sand dunes in their escape from the beach. Not all of them will make it. Some get cooked by the heat, others are born with broken flippers while others still have to get past the dogs, hawks, vultures, raccoons and coatis that track the moveable feast.
Visitors watching this miracle can help ward off predators, but it's up to the turtles to make it to the water. The turtles spend only a small fraction of their 100- to 150-year lifespan on land and their sprint across the beach is critical in learning the chemical composition of the sand. If they make it to the water and survive to maturity, the female green sea turtles will return in 35 years to lay their own eggs on Tortuguero Beach.
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