Lee McCarthy
It’s a busy time for the dedicated volunteers of the Cooloola Coast, ensuring the nesting mother turtles and their eggs are safe during nesting season.
Cooloola CoastCare, Turtle Care joint coordinator Jan Waters said the Green and Loggerhead Sea turtles have all but finished Phase I of the nesting season along the Cooloola Coast.
Here she explains the three phases of nesting:
* Phase 1 – Laying
The female digs out a body pit with her front flippers and then excavates a vertical egg chamber (between 30 and 60cm deep) with her hind flippers. She lays the clutch of leathery-shelled eggs, about 120 eggs of ping-pong ball size.
After laying, the turtle fills the egg chamber with sand using her hind flippers, and then fills the body pit using all four flippers.
* Phase 2 – Incubation
The temperature of the nest during incubation determines the sex of hatchlings. Warm sand produces mostly females. Eggs laid in cool sand result mostly in males and generally take longer to hatch.
* Phase 3 – Hatching
After about seven to 12 weeks, the eggs hatch. The hatchlings take two or more days to reach the surface where they emerge as a group, usually at night.
The team have relocated the “at risk” nests along Rainbow and Teewah Beach to higher ground including nests in the dunes due to the effects of surging and high tides following damage caused by ex-tropical cyclone Gabrielle with one metre of the cliff dropping off along the Rainbow Beach stretch.
They have relocated three nests at Teewah, two at the Oaks at Inskip Point and one at Rainbow Shores and the hatchlings are due to emerge in late March.
Cooloola CoastCare, Turtle Care is a locally based volunteer group that coordinates with Australia Zoo and SeaWorld to care for sick turtles when rescued.
They have a dedicated core group of 10 volunteers from Rainbow Beach, Cooloola Coast and Tin Can Bay.
Jan said, fortunately they have an extended group of beach walkers and ‘ready to help’ locals and assistance comes in the form of volunteers and donations.
“We have been very fortunate to receive a Gympie Regional Council Community Grant to help with our fuel costs and to publish the booklet, Turtle Talk.”
“The raffle proceeds from the Rainbow Beach Sports Club are being used to build the mud flats rescue trolley and Rotary, Caloundra Pacific have donated a turtle harness used to restrain the large turtles for their journey to Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital.”
Ms Waters has just spent a week at Mon Repos Research Centre, learning and working with the volunteers and said they had six loggerheads come in each night to lay.
She said she was on the midnight to dawn shift and, “I was lucky enough to be ‘on duty’ when the ‘Flatback’ hatchlings ran.”
Mon Repos have had 386 Loggerheads, nine Green Turtles and one Flatback visit so far this season.
If you would like to volunteer, donate or be involved with Cooloola CoastCare, Turtle Care, please contact joint coordinators Jan Waters or Gary Swanson at Cooloolacoastcare.org.au.
To report turtle track sightings, call 0493 511 207, which is the dedicated TurtleCare number.
For strandings, injured or dead turtles call the Strandings Hotline 1300 103 373 all year round.
