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Record number of baby sea turtles crawl to Med Sea
Record number of baby sea turtles crawl to Med Sea
Record numbers of newborn sea turtles have crawled into the Mediterranean Sea from the shore of Çıralı in Turkey’s southern province of Antalya, the leader of an environmentalist group said on Nov. 5.
“This year we set a new record. We have reached the highest number of nests in Çıralı with 151. The number of eggs also increased in parallel with the record number of nests, and we broke a record with 13,729 eggs,” said Habib Altınkaya, the head of a local environmental protection cooperative in the town of Ulupınar.
“The number of nests on the Çıralı beach increased from 75 in 2017 to 151 in 2018, and the number of newborn sea turtles increased to a record number of 7,612 from 4,432 last year,” he added.
“We have concluded a very good sea turtle season. We have conducted a very good protection work in cooperation with the Antalya Governor’s Office, the district governor’s office of Kemer, the municipality of Kemer, the Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks and NGOs around Çıralı,” Altınkaya said.
Turkey’s southwest and south coasts have been home to the caretta carettas’ natural spawning grounds. An endangered species in the world, the sea turtles leave their eggs in 50-60-centimeter-deep holes, where they hatch in 50 days.
The baby sea turtles then haul to the sand’s surface before crawling to the sea. They put great effort to reach the sea as soon as they get hatched. The ones which have failed to do so were helped by volunteers.
Photo credits: Demirören News Agency
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