Turtle Eggs Hatch

The second batch of eggs from the three loggerhead turtle nests that were placed on Cofete beach as part of a project to reintroduce loggerhead turtles to Fuerteventura have hatched producing over 100 young turtles so far.

This project has been developed due to collaboration between the Government of the republic of Cape Verde, the Canarian Government, the Doñana Biological Station in the south of Spain, the university of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the Cabildo of Fuerteventura.

The project has been in operation for ten years with extensive studies on the quality of the sand, temperature water quality etc. Thanks to these studies it was possible to choose the beaches of the island as a place to deposit turtle eggs which had been brought from Cape Verde. This process will have to be repeated for at least ten years so that the animals recover the habit of depositing their eggs in Fuerteventura, where there are historical references to turtle nests three hundred years ago. The conditions at Cofete hav ebeen assessed as being near perfect and this has meant that around 70% of the eggs have hatched.

Most of the eggs from turtle nests hatch in a very short space of time as a survival mechanism against predators, as the young turtles all head for the sea at the same time. In spite of this the mortality rate in the wild, is close to 100% so the turtles that have been born on Fuerteventura have been put in "intensive care" under the supervision of the biologists at Camp Tortugas, who are using a tank with a capacity of 300 litres that has been set up in the field, until they can be transported to a tank that the Cabildo has installed at the port at Morro Jable.

The photograph shows the President of the Cabildo Fuerteventura with the baby turtles.