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ARCHIVED - Loggerhead turtle nest located in Calnegre with two hatchlings alive
Fatality rates are very high; many baby turtles will never make it out of the nest and only one in 1,000 hatchlings reaches adulthood
It’s turtle hatching season and this week researchers and experts in sea turtles from the University of Valencia, personnel from the General Directorate of Natural Environment and the Asociación Naturactúa from Lorca, have been searching the beaches of Calnegre in Lorca, trying to locate the nest from which two baby loggerhead turtles found on the shores of Calnegre had emerged, and on Friday morning they finally discovered its location.
Today's was from the third search for the loggerhead turtle nest which was known to be somewhere in the Calnegre-Cabo Cope Regional Park, and the nest was finally found in poor sand and in an area described by the researchers as “not very suitable”, by which they mean that the depth of the nest and its position decreased the chances of the eggs actually hatching as the temperatire inside would have been lethally high.
Their fears were borne out when the nest was opened and was found to contain 73 undeveloped eggs, 12 hatchlings dead in the shell which had failed to fully hatch and eight empty shells. Two very weakened hatchlings were located inside the nest and these were immediately removed and taken to the El Valle wildlife recovery centre on the outskirts of Murcia for a preliminary evaluation, before joining the other two hatchlings located on the beach earlier in the week and recovering at the IMIDA Marine Aquaculture Center in San Pedro del Pinatar (this is where the 21 hatchlings from last year have been reared).
Although there is sadness that the nest was not located earlier and perhaps the other hatchlings could have been saved, it’s also very exciting as this is a new milestone for the environment in the Region of Murcia and for the protection and development of fauna, as this is the second nest in which eggs are known to have been laid in 2020; last year a nest successfully yielded 21 hatchlings, the first time loggerheads are known to have nested in the region for a century.
The other nest was found in La Manga during July and contained 100 eggs, ten of which were transferred to the El Valle Fauna Recovery centre, while the remaining 90 were reburied. Hopes are high that they will hatch in the next few days.
The same scenario is being played out in other areas of Spain. Click to see 10 loggerhead turtles from the Es Cavallet nest hatch in Ibiza published yesterday.