Visitors to Queensland's famous Mon Repos Beach have witnessed history with a record number of endangered loggerhead turtles hauling their way up the sand dunes. This season has seen an influx of endangered loggerheads, with more than 500 females laying approximately 265,000 eggs at the protected beach since November.
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00:00It's been an exciting turtle season here at Mon Repos with a record number of endangered
00:09loggerhead turtles nesting on the beach.
00:13More than 500 females have already made their way up the sand dunes since November and have
00:19laid about 260,000 eggs.
00:22Rangers say it's the best numbers they've seen since the 1970s.
00:27We've probably got around about 260,000 eggs incubating along the Woongarra coast at the
00:34moment, so lots of hatchling action over the next couple of months.
00:38Some turtles come back to the exact same beach they left as a hatchling through research
00:42studies that we've done, but we know that they come back to that general area.
00:46So the hatchlings we see crossing the beach, they're getting that orientation to the earth's
00:50magnetic field and that's what they use to find their way back.
00:54Mon Repos has the largest concentration of nesting turtles in Australia and the South
00:59Pacific, with loggerheads, flatbacks and green turtles making their way to the protected
01:05beach.
01:06The nightly tours have been a big drawcard for tourists learning about conservation and
01:13marine life.
01:14We got to feel some little baby turtles on our hands and we got to see them all break
01:23out of their eggs and they were all so cute and we saw basically heaps of them.
01:29The boom in nesting turtles has led to a busy start to the hatchling season, with hundreds
01:35of baby turtles emerging from their nests every single night.
01:40And it's not too late for visitors to catch a glimpse of these beautiful creatures.
01:45The turtle season runs right through until the end of March.