The 2019 sea turtle nesting season is well and truly underway at Royal Resorts in Cancun with 246 nests already under the careful watch of our turtle guardians. The security teams at The Royal Sands, The Royal Caribbean and The Royal Islander are patrolling the beaches every night on the lookout for female turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs in the sand.
They watch silently from a distance as the turtles dig their nests and begin to lay their eggs. When they have finished, the guards carefully remove the precious clutch and take the eggs to a corral or turtle nursery further up the beach where they will be safe from the waves, the passage of human feet and predators such as seagulls. They dig a nest that must be identical in shape and depth to the original nest, deposit the eggs that resemble soft golf balls, label it with the date, species and number of eggs and begin their long wait. Forty-five to 60 days later, the eggs will hatch and the baby turtles will be released at night to begin life at sea.
There are currently 26,557 eggs (July 8 figures) in the corrals at the three resorts, a good sign that the summer of 2019 will be a busier nesting season than 2018. All the nests recorded to date are those of green turtles (tortuga blanca or verde) except for three loggerheads (caguama) and one hawksbill turtle (carey), the smallest of the species that nest on the beaches of the Mexican Caribbean.
Breaking news! The first baby turtles of the season have been released: 246 baby loggerhead turtles that were born in the corrals at The Royal Sands and The Royal Caribbean. Many thousands more will follow in the months to come.
Help protect the turtles, follow nesting season rules
If you are going to stay at Royal Resorts this summer, please join us in protecting our turtle visitors. Follow nesting season rules:
• Alert security staff if you see a turtle on the beach at night
• Be very quiet and keep still, noise, lights and the movement of people disturb nesting sea turtles and may cause them to leave the beach without laying eggs
• Watch from a distance of ten (33 feet) meters
• Do not attempt to touch the turtle or crowd her
• Do not shine torches or use the light on your mobile phone
• No flash photography
• No smoking
• Obey security staff when they give instructions
• Help us to keep our beaches and sea clean. Plastic straws, bags, packaging, fishing lines and nets and other garbage floating in the water are lethal to turtles and other marine life
• When snorkeling or diving watch turtles from a distance, do not swim towards them and do not attempt to touch them
• Wear a t-shirt when snorkeling as protection from the sun instead of applying sun block. Sun products pollute the water and are harmful to marine life
• Turtles are protected by Mexican law and it is illegal to disturb them, persecute or hunt them and consume their meat or eggs.
We will be giving our readers regular updates during the 2019 sea turtle nesting season with the latest news from Royal Resorts and other parts of the Mexican Caribbean.
