Overview
- Features: Nesting turtles on the beach near the Jurabi Turtle Centre
- Opening Times: Nightfall to dawn, December to February
- Best Time to Visit: December to February
- Duration: 1 to 2 hours
- Travelled By: Rental car
- Cost: Guided tours – $20 per adult, $10 per child, otherwise free
- Address: Exmouth, Western Australia
- Type: Wildlife
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Summary
Watching nesting turtles during sea turtle nesting season is a unique experience and one that you can encounter on a night tour with the Jurabi Turtle Centre in Exmouth. You can also attempt to spot them on your own after dusk at the beach near the Centre. Remember to remain quiet when you go to view them otherwise you will scare them away from nesting.
Sea Turtle Nesting Season in Exmouth
Sea turtles can be encountered on Western Australia’s Coral Coast all year round and hatchlings may be sighted during sea turtle nesting season. You can snorkel with them through the beautiful coral gardens of the Ningaloo Marine Park. You can see them pop their heads up out of the water on a wildlife cruise in the Shark Bay Marine Park. Or, as we did, you can watch them nesting and hatching on a night tour in Cape Range National Park in Exmouth.
Sea turtle nesting season is between November and March every year. Green turtles, loggerhead turtles and hawksbill turtles nest on mainland beaches adjacent to Ningaloo Reef during this time of the year.
The Jurabi Turtle Centre is an interpretive, educational facility located 13kms from the Exmouth township. It is situated between Hunters and Mauritius beaches, adjacent to a popular rookery for three threatened species of marine turtles: the Green, Loggerhead and Hawksbill.
At the Jurabi Turtle Centre, not only did we get to see nesting turtles on a night tour, we also learnt about the marine turtle conservation and educational program undertaken to manage turtle-visitor interaction and minimise the impact of human disturbance on nesting marine turtles along the Ningaloo coast.
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It takes several decades for adult sea turtles to reach sexual maturity. Once mature, every two to four years, female turtles return to the beach where they were born to lay their eggs, hence swimming thousand of miles to get to the nesting sites.
After mating at sea, adult female sea turtles return to land to nest at night. They make from one to eight nests per sea turtle nesting season. The mature nesting female hauls herself onto the beach, nearly always at night, and finds suitable sand on which to create a nest.
Before laying her eggs, a female turtle will dig a hole in the sand with her hind flippers. After the hole is dug, the female then starts filling the nest with a clutch of soft-shelled eggs one by one until she has deposited around 50 to 200 eggs. She covers it with sand and returns to the ocean.
The hatchling’s gender depends on the sand temperature. Lighter sands maintain higher temperatures, which decreases incubation time and results in more female hatchlings.
About two months pass for the eggs to incubate under the sand. Afterwards, the eggs hatch, generally at night to avoid predation, and the hatchlings crawl to the water. They then swim out to sea to begin their own cycle of maturing and reproducing.
Sea turtles can continue this cycle until they are 80 years old.
You can take a night tour with the Jurabi Turtle Centre or you can go down to the beach after dark to see nesting turtles yourself. The chances of spotting nesting turtles are higher if you go on a night tour as the experienced guides know where to look for them.
Tip
Remember to be extremely quiet so as not to scare off the nesting turtle who will return to the sea if disturbed.
