Photo NTM: False turtle crawl

Saturday marked the official closing of turtle nesting season for the Maltese Islands and Nature Trust – Fee Malta Wildlife Rescue Team said that it was a ”hard year.”

The NGO noted that ”it was a roller coaster of emotions this year, from the thrill of finding crawls, the disappointment when they turned out one after the other to be false crawls (turtle comes out of sea but returns to the sea without nesting).”

Last year, Ramla Bay in Gozo was home to four turtle nests, three of these were laid by by the same turtle, named –Johanna. In total 319 hatchlings made it to the sea from 4 nests on Gozo and 2 in Malta.

However, NTM said that this year they noted ”the confusion watching a turtle actually dig a nesting chamber but not laying a single egg after 2 hours sitting on the dug chamber.”

”The frustration of seeing confused turtles coming out on rocks, or on extremely busy beaches where previously there were no nesting activities only to find people blocking her path,” said the organisation.

”This meant the immediate upscaling of beaches being monitored, from 7, up to 17. Our volunteers really jumped in to pitch in with this increase in workload – Unfortunately, none of the attempts resulted in a nest,” said NTM.

Volunteers will keep patrolling until the end of August, to make sure that if there is a late nester, it is not missed, it said.

Nature Trust – Fee Malta Wildlife Rescue Team concluded by saying that ”this year has showed us we cannot take anything for granted. Just because we’ve had at least 1 nest every year, it is not guaranteed – Hopefully nesting season 2027 will be better.”

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