[Animals] Five loggerhead turtles hatch on the Mar Bella beach

[WilkerCSBD]

The specimens belong to the nest with 77 eggs that was found last July
The Mar Bella beach in Barcelona saw the first five hatchlings of the caretta caretta sea turtle (also known as the loggerhead turtle), a protected species cataloged as vulnerable, be born on the night from Thursday to Friday. The Department of Territory and Sustainability of the Generalitat and the Barcelona City Council explained yesterday that the five specimens are part of the nest of 77 eggs identified on July 16. The nest was then moved away from the shore to avoid being engulfed by the sea, if there were strong waves.

The five newborn turtles were transferred to the CRAM Foundation, where they will be bred in captivity until they are of adequate weight to be released. The forecast now is that in the coming nights other young will be born, so a group of volunteers will watch over the nest, as they have done day and night since it was found.

This has been the first time that a loggerhead turtle nest has been detected on a beach in the city of Barcelona, a nest that must be added to three others detected this summer in different parts of the Catalan coast.

In the Mar Bella nest there are now 55 eggs, as another 17 were transferred from the beginning to the CRAM Foundation facilities to be incubated artificially.

Four of the five turtles born yesterday present some type of malformation, something to be expected given that the eggs have hatched in only 46 days, when they usually hatch from the egg after 60 days.

This is being a record summer in turtle egg laying on Catalan beaches, with four cases, something that had not happened since 2014. Last week another nest with loggerhead torture eggs (caretta caretta) was found on the Trabucador beach, in the delta de l'Ebre.

Biologists believe that this increase in the presence of this species of turtle, which habitually spawns on Atlantic beaches - with greater abundance in Florida, Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama - and that it increasingly comes to spawn on Mediterranean beaches Western, is due to climate change, although conclusive data are not yet available.

So far this summer, in addition to the delta and Barcelona beach sunsets, loggerhead turtle nests have also been found on the beach of Vila-seca (Tarragona), where the same mother made two eggs, which were grouped by biologists.