Less than 48 hours after the nest registered in Dénia, a new sea turtle has spawned this morning on our coasts. This time, the animal has chosen the north beach of Gandia where it has laid 62 eggs. It is the second nest that is recorded this season in the Valencian Community.
Once again, citizen collaboration has been essential in this finding. The cleaning service operators have seen the turtle in the sand around 06:00 and have immediately notified the Local Police, who have alerted the Emergency services, through 112, and the Network has been launched Stranding of the Valencian Community.
The Fundación Oceanogràfic rescue team and technicians from the University of Valencia (UV) have traveled to the place and, with the help of the municipal police, have protected the area.
To guarantee the health and well-being of the turtle, the veterinarians of the Oceanogràfic Foundation have performed an ultrasound and a blood test and, as happened with the Dénia turtle last Sunday, the technicians of the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the UV have installed a satellite transmitter that will allow to know its monitoring in the coming months and expand knowledge about the biology and routes of these animals.
As usual in nesting cases, part of the nest -in this case 7 eggs- have been moved to the Fundación Oceanogràfic incubators where they will receive the necessary care for their development. Once they hatch, the hatchlings will form part of the “Head-starting” project, whose objective is to increase the survival of the animals during the first months of life and that they reach a sufficient size to allow them to avoid most predators once in life. the sea.
The remaining 55 eggs have been deposited on a protected beach in the Albufera Natural Park to guarantee their protection and avoid contact with passers-by.
The loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) is one of the seven species of sea turtles that currently exist and the most common that inhabits Spanish waters. Although its population is distributed throughout the planet, with important nesting areas in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, in the Mediterranean it nests, mainly in the easternmost part, in countries such as Turkey, Cyprus or Greece.
For some years now, the coasts of Spain, France or Italy have been registering a greater presence of loggerhead turtle egg layings, so one of the working hypotheses carried out by the Fundación Oceanogràfic researchers is that of the colonization of the western Mediterranean by the species as a possible response to climate change.
A crucial line of research to understand the phenomenon of colonization and the conservation of these animals is reproductive physiology. Understanding how, when and why they reproduce allows us to better analyze the population context and work accordingly to preserve them.
For this reason, the Oceanogràfic Foundation travels every summer to the African Cape Verde archipelago together with the Boa Vista Tartaruga Project, to study sea turtles during the nesting season, as it is one of the most important nesting areas. of the species in the world.
