First of all a Happy New Year to all our followers, volunteers and friends.

A few weeks ago the last baby turtles hatched and were released into the ocean; and finally we got the end results for the sea turtle season 2016 for whole Cancun. According to the Department of Ecology, the ones responsible for the program:

Yesterday our last two nests hatched and we could release another 67 baby sea turtles. With this our sea turtle season is over and it’s time to “balance the books”.

The sea turtle season 2016 is coming to an end. With 422 collected and protected nests with nearly 50,000 eggs we, as in the previous year, looked after the most turtle eggs in our corral and released the most hatchlings in the Cancun area. The Department of Ecology, responsible for the sea turtle protection program on Cancun’s beaches, therefore asked Tim, the one in charge of our small project, to use our protection corral for a short TV report and to participate in an interview.

It’s the beginning of October and sea turtle season is coming to an end. The last few nights only a handful mother turtles came ashore to nest, so our work now is shifting more and more to releasing our lovely sea turtle hatchlings and cleaning the nests by opening them, removing empty eggs shells / undeveloped eggs and “rescuing” the one or other baby trapped in the nest underneath all the trash.

Recently we were lucky to have some Green Sea Turtle and Hawksbill Sea Turtle hatchlings at the same time; so we are happy that we can show you both in comparison. On the cover photo above the Green See Turtle is on the right, on the left you see the much smaller Hawksbill baby. From head to toe, ups better from head to little tail the Green Sea Turtle hatchling measured 9 cm (3.5 inches), the shell was 5.5 cm x 4.5 cm (2.2 in x 1.8 in), while the measurements for the Hawksbill baby were 7.5 cm (3 inches) in total length, shell size 4.5 cm x 4 cm (1.8 in x 1.5 in). Both were quite big fellas for their species. Even when they are adults this size difference remains.

The last few days we have been super busy at the beach at night. Lots of sea turtle moms coming ashore looking for a place to nest ... unfortunately also lots of incorrigible, disrespectful and ignorant national and international visitors scaring these sensitive animals away. Nevertheless, during the night from Friday to Saturday we could collect 7 nests, Saturday to Sunday night 15 nests (it was so great), Sunday to Monday night another 10 nests and last night 6 nests.