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By Rajan Simons
Published Aug 18, 2015 at 8:00 am (Updated Aug 18, 2015 at 8:25 am)

A baby turtle discovered on a beach in St George's

Green turtle hatchlings discovered on an East End beach have been labelled Bermuda’s “natural history event of the century”.

One of the tiny baby green turtles was found crossing Barry Road, St George’s, by a member of the public who then alerted the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo.

A team of conservationists then visited the nearby beach to search for a nest. In total 15 hatchlings were found on the beach at Alexandra Battery — 12 of which have been released into the water.

Former Government Conservation Officer David Wingate said: “From my perspective I regard this as the Bermuda natural history event of the century.

“This is a momentous event in sea turtle research and conservation because it is the first confirmed case of recolonisation of a green turtle rookery in the world that I am aware of and may, indeed, be a belated result of the egg translocation project conducted here between 1968 and 1978.”

Commenting on Facebook, Jennifer Gray, the chief executive of the Bermuda National Trust, said it was the first time hatchling green turtles had crawled down a beach and swum into the ocean off the East End in more than 100 years.

“We were able to rescue a total of 11 that were found caught in long grass and along the base of a wall at the back of the beach,” wrote Ms Gray.

“These were seen safely into the ocean and watched intently as they swam out toward open ocean. A moment, an hour, a day, a memory I will treasure for the rest of my life.”

Yesterday, the Department of Parks informed the public that the beach is closed to public use due to a turtle nest in the middle of the beach. A spokeswoman said: “Staff from the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo are currently stationed at the beach to monitor the hatchlings and, along with Parks rangers, will advise anyone who visits the site of the closure.

“Maintenance staff from the Department of Parks have been instructed not to rake the beach until receiving clearance from the Department of Conservation Services.”

The beach will be closed until at least tomorrow and the public will be informed when it is reopened for use.

Why the discovery is so significant

David Wingate, the conservationist, explains why the discovery of green turtle hatchlings in the East End is such a significant moment for Bermuda.

1) In pre-colonial times Bermuda was a major sea turtle rookery for green turtles (confirmed by the writings of Richard Norwood) and that nesting rookery was the first in the new world to be wiped out, although the date of its final extirpation is uncertain: it may have lingered into the 1920s or 1930s.

2) From 1968 to 1978 Bermuda participated in an experimental translocation of green turtle egg clutches from Tortuguero, Costa Rica, in the hope that the hatchlings emerging would imprint on Bermuda and return there to breed when mature, thus restoring a breeding colony. This project was sponsored by Dr Clay Frick, then of Castle Point, Bermuda, and the Caribbean Conservation Corporation. Approximately 16,000 baby greens were released to sea from translocated shipments of eggs totalling 30,000. Given the amount of time that has passed since then, the relatively small number of turtles likely to have reached adulthood owing to the high mortality rate after hatching, and the fact, learnt later, that the sex of sea turtles is determined by temperature during incubation and that the lower temperatures of the Bermuda beaches chosen for the translocation, probably resulted in a preponderance of males, this translocation experiment has generally been considered to have failed.

3) We still cannot, at this point, confirm that this laying on Buildings Bay is a direct result of the translocation experiment, but the finding of two dead hatchlings from that hatch will enable [scientist] Peter Meylan to determine their DNA profile and this, compared against a database of DNA profiles from green turtle populations throughout the Atlantic, should enable him to determine which population the parent turtle originates from. If the hatchlings prove to be from Costa Rican stock it greatly increases the likelihood that the parent is a survivor of the translocation project. Why else would a Costa Rican turtle choose to nest on Bermuda? On the other hand, if the DNA results show the parent was from another population it will prove that this nesting is not a result of the translocation but a very rare case of a spurious nesting from another population. According to Dr Meylan, that population would most likely be the Florida breeding population because of its closest proximity to Bermuda and the fact that it has been increasing very rapidly in recent years and has a similar peak egg laying time. The Buildings Bay clutch must have been laid in early June.