Eighty Hawksbill Sea Turtle Hatchlings Journeys to Sea on Tobacco Caye

On November nineteenth, Tobacco Caye saw its first set of hawksbill turtle hatchlings, since five years ago, released into the sea. On September twenty-first, a hawksbill turtle returned to the island to nest. It laid its eggs on The Windward Lodge’s property where the manager of the lodge, Gorlee Bradley, carefully monitored the nest during the sixty-day incubation period. And, much to her delight, on Saturday she found that a number of the eggs had hatched. With a little assistance, due to how compact the sand on the beach is, Bradley and her team from the lodge successfully released eighty hatchlings into the sea. We spoke with her via Zoom.

Gorlee Bradley

Gorlee Bradley, Manager, The Windward Lodge

“This one we were mining it like our very own baby and we were watching it since that night when it came up and laid and sixty days is normally the incubation period. I started to watch it from fifty days. On November nineteenth was actually the sixteenth night. So, I got up and I decided to check n the nest. There was a small hole, maybe an inch. When I looked deeper there was a fin moving, so I started to dig and we dig and while we were digging I came on more eggs that weren’t hatched, so I covered it back. I contacted Ecomar and told them what was happening.  They said to watch them for the next few days to see if those remaining eggs would come up. So, we got them out, some of them looked like they were winded, practically suffocating in the sand. We put them in a tub of water and we released them on the east side of the island, because the winds are coming in strong from the north. So we released them over there. On the reef they had some mangrove and we watched them until they reached that area. We saw their little nose popping up for air. It was really exciting, because like I said, five years we haven’t had this. So, for something like this to happen it just excited the entire island.”