At around 5.36pm on Feb 14, the staff at Anantara Mai Khao Phuket Villas informed Sirinat National Park that they had found turtle traces on the sand of Mai Khao beach.
Local officials from the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) rushed to the scene and promptly confirmed the traces were left by a leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), the largest of all living turtles and the heaviest non-crocodilian reptile in the world.
The tracks on the sand indicated that the turtle’s shell was 110 cm wide and the flipper swipe reached 200 cm. Remaining unnoticed, the turtle made her way up the beach, laid eggs, and returned to the sea.
As the nest was beyond the high tide mark, DNP officials considered the location safe and decided not to relocate the eggs. Not wanting to create unnecessary disturbance, they refrained from counting the eggs, limiting their interaction with nest, buried 73cm deep into the sand.
“These leatherback turtle eggs will take approximately 55-60 days to hatch, which is expected to happen between Apr 9-14. Sirinat National Park officials have organised a close watch of the nest to provide 24-hour care and ensure safe incubation,” the national park said in a notice on Facebook. The case was later confirmed by the DNP in a separate publication.
On Jan 27, wildlife officials in Phuket marked the first visit of a sea turtle to Phuket this year when an olive ridley turtle laid eggs near the Centara Grand Beach Resort Phuket on Karon Beach. This was exactly where a leatheback turtle laid eggs off-season in 2023.
This season, the first leatherback turtle visited Phuket only on Feb 14, when there had already been around a dozen confirmed egg-layings by these sea reptiles in Phang Nga province and at least two confirmed hatchings.
The most recent hatching was reported by the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR) on Feb 11. In total, 77 tiny leatherback turtles hatched on that day on Tha Sai Beach, with 52 heading straight to the sea and 25 remaining under care until they get strong enough to follow their siblings.
Feb 11 was also the day of the most recent confimed discovery of leatherback turtle eggs in Phang Nga reported by the DMCR. The most recent report by the DNP was published on Jan 23, indicating the turtle season being in full swing in Phuket and Phang Nga.