The first hawksbill turtle nest of the season has been found on Little Cayman.
The Department of Environment’s Turtle Team Volunteer Coordinator Lorri Lamb and volunteer Marique Cloete found the nest of the critically endangered turtle this week.
The DoE says the nesting population of this species in the Cayman Islands is “extremely low in numbers”.
Often, only one or two nests are found per year and there are many years with no nests recorded at all, the DoE noted in a social media post.
“Hawksbill turtle nests look similar to loggerhead turtle nests so it can be difficult to confirm identification without seeing a hatchling. But luckily, after a nest has hatched and we perform the excavation to count the hatched eggs, we can usually confirm the species,” the department said.
“When we excavated this nest, we found a few hatchlings were left behind so we safely released them the same evening.”
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