Beaches in San Vicente municipality in the Philippines’ Palawan province are crucial nesting grounds for olive ridley sea turtles. But the turtles and their babies face perilous journeys on those beaches — from dogs, tourism, and increasingly severe storms and high tides.
To counter these threats, the NGO Large Marine Vertebrates Research Institute Philippines (LAMAVE) has partnered with residents to patrol the beaches and rescue turtle eggs, reports contributor Rachel Duckett for Mongabay.
In Santo Niño village, volunteers and patrollers conduct intensive night patrols covering more than 8 kilometers (5 mile) of the beach in five shifts.
When the patrollers find a nesting turtle, they protect her from dogs. When she’s done nesting, they measure her and take photographs of her before she reenters the water. These help them identify her in the future.
Then they relocate the eggs to protected hatcheries, a move researchers say is vital because nests left on the beach are almost always lost to stray dogs or flooding. Sometimes, they encounter dead nesting mothers or turtles mortally wounded by dogs. They remove eggs from those nests as well.
