Turtles hatch on Big Island beach
Associated Press
PUNALU'U, Hawai'i — More than 100 endangered baby sea turtles have hatched from a nest on Punalu'u's black-sand beach, where a female Hawaiian hawksbill turtle known by the tag "60M" had laid her eggs in July.
Associated Press via Hawaii Tribune-Herald
It was the first time one of the rare sea turtles has nested along the popular narrow beach since 1999.
Top: Ecologist Larry Katahira and two youngsters watched as a pair of Hawaiian hawksbill hatchlings crawled toward the gently lapping waves off Punalu'u on Monday. Above: This Hawaiian hawksbill turtle was one of the last recovered from a nest and set free at the water's edge.
Although the black sand beach is known for Hawaiian green sea turtles, those turtles prefer to swim the hundreds of miles to French Frigate Shoals in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands to nest.
The Hawaiian hawksbill will nest every two to five years, mostly on remote beaches in Ka'u and Puna on the Big Island. A few nest on Maui and Moloka'i.
The 2003 nesting season has been relatively slow, with only six turtles observed nesting along Big Island beaches to date, said Larry Katahira, a resource management specialist at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park.
Each hawksbill turtle can lay up to six nests during the nesting season, which runs from June to November. The six turtles observed this year established a total of 19 nests at four locations, including four nests at an area south of Punalu'u Beach being called "Halfway" because it is midway between Punalu'u and Ninole to the south.
Halfway is a small pocket of sand where turtles were known to have nested historically but not in recent years.
The turtle that nested July 9 and left 184 eggs at Punalu'u was first tagged by volunteers from the national park's turtle program in 1996 when it nested at Kamehame, a beach north of Punalu'u that has become the most common nesting site for hawksbills. But it had not been seen since.
"We don't know where she's gone," he said. "Usually they will come back to the same area. It could be that she nested somewhere unknown to us."
Hawksbills are known for nesting in small pockets of coastal sand, such as at Halfway where nests easily could be missed, he said.
Although turtle 60M made several visits to Punalu'u after the July 9 nesting, it only dug holes and left no eggs.
The July 9 nest was discovered by Savannah Silva, a junior at Ka'u High School who was among a group of students led by science teacher Renwick Bibilone returning from an overnight stay at Kamehame with park biologist Eldridge Naboa.
"The kids were really excited," Bibilone said.
Ninety hatchlings emerged from the nest and headed for the water Sept. 6 . Two more came out the next day. On Monday, the last 25 were helped to the water.
Hawksbill sea turtles are also found in the Atlantic and Indian oceans and in the Caribbean. They were placed on the federal endangered species list in 1970.
