Green Turtle Chelonia mydas

Sea turtles are ancient reptiles that have changed little over their 150 million year history on Earth. The earliest sea turtles watched the Age of the Dinosaurs come and go! Of the seven species that occur in the world today, five are found along the Kenyan coast: Loggerhead, Hawksbill, Leatherback, Olive Ridley and Green.

A female Green Turtle returns to the sea off Watamu after laying her eggs

Turtles are renowned for their longevity. Green Turtles are the commonest species breeding on Watamu beach adjacent to Mwamba (the A Rocha Kenya field study centre) and may live for eighty or ninety years, but don't start breeding until they are about forty. A single female will lay 120-180 eggs in one nest and last year one very large and old female laid ten nests over several months. A nest is dug 60-80 cm deep in the sand above the high tide mark and the whole process of laying can take up
to two or three hours. Whilst a female baby will not come back to shore until it lays, it returns to the same beach - and often the same part of the beach - from which it hatched.

The sex of a turtle is dependent on the temperature at which it is incubated. Thus deeper, cooler nests produce more males while shallower, hotter nests tend to hatch females. In an unexploited wild population, a mere one in a thousand eggs will become a breeding adult.

Traditionally, turtles have been hunted along the Kenyan Coast for food, oil and economically valuable products such as shells and leather. Over-exploitation now seriously threatens their survival. In Watamu, however, there is some hope. A Rocha Kenya does not specifically work on turtle conservation as there is a local conservation body that does - but we actively support and work with Watamu Turtle Watch. Over the past three to five years, due to a concerted patrolling and public awareness effort by WTW, the raiding of nests by people in Watamu has been reduced to zero. A Rocha Kenya collaborates with WTW in a number of ways: by promoting conservation within the same community around Mida Creek (a feeding ground for a lot of young turtles); through the ASSETS community conservation programme and our Environmental Education programme; and by welcoming the WTW volunteers who stay at Mwamba.

I hope that in time we shall also have a marine biologist on our team to work even more closely with WTW on the conservation of the extremely special marine environment that we have here. It is vital that we work together as much as possible to ensure the survival of yet another incredible part of God's creation.

Colin Jackson
Originally in A Rocha International News
Issue 32, October 2003