Baby loggerhead turtles were born in Saint-Cyprien

Around fifteen newborns of this endangered species have just emerged from the sand on this beach in the Pyrénées-Orientales.

The first little black heads emerged from the sand on Tuesday and since then others have followed… About fifteen wriggles, that’s the name of the baby sea turtle, thus headed for the water on Thursday, September 19, no doubt a few others have followed them in the last few hours. All this, under the eyes and supervision of specialists and volunteers who had been waiting for this for weeks, since the end of July in fact, when the mother turtle had been spotted on this beach where she had come to lay her eggs.

This is a first in this department of the Pyrénées-Orientales. Since then, the nest had been protected, with a fence placed all around, to give these babies a chance to be born and become adult reptiles that can measure one meter on average and weigh around a hundred kilos. The record, apparently, is so far 500 kilos.

The loggerhead turtle is still quite widespread around the world, mainly in warm and tropical seas in winter and in more temperate waters in summer. But, like many marine species, it is subject to the pressure that our activities put on it, particularly accidental catches in fishing nets. It is also eaten in certain regions of the world. And then it is a victim of our pollution, particularly that of plastics and microplastics that we dump by the shovelful into the seas and which end up in the stomachs of these animals, when they do not choke on them.

As a result, today, the loggerhead turtle is classified as vulnerable on the lists of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is the watchdog of the wild world and has recently called for strengthening the protection of the nesting areas of these turtles in the Mediterranean. A call that is all the more necessary since we are finding more and more loggerhead turtles on our Mediterranean coasts without knowing very well whether this is due to climate change, which changes the temperature of the Mediterranean or the internal currents of this closed sea. Is it due to the displacement or reduction of their food in their usual feeding areas made up of mollusks or fish?

The fact remains that we are seeing more and more of them in mainland France and Corsica. Last year, a record of 14 nests was recorded on our southern beaches. A few specimens have also been spotted or saved further north, on the Atlantic coast and even on a beach in the English Channel.