Several dozen baby turtles have hatched on Fréjus beach

Several dozen baby turtles of the species Caretta Caretta, or loggerhead turtle, have hatched for 24 hours on the public beach of Fréjus (Var) where a female had come to lay in July, the Marine turtle network indicated this Thursday, August 27. of the French Mediterranean (RTMMF).

Read also: Var: a sea turtle comes to lay its eggs on the public beach of Fréjus

“ The eggs started to hatch early Wednesday morning. It was people present on the beach who gave the report after observing between 10 and 20 small turtles leaving for the sea ”, indicated Sidonie Catteau, local referent of the RTMMF and project manager for the Marineland association.

The monitoring teams made up, in addition to the RTMMF, of the French Biodiversity Office (OFB), the city of Fréjus and the Marine Observatory of the local agglomeration community, then, once there, recorded in the morning 8 new departures and again 20 in the evening. " We will continue our surveillance, because we do not know if there are still eggs that will hatch in the nest, which can count up to 90 ", specifies Sidonie Catteau. “ At one point, it's like a big broth, the turtles all come out at the same time and then it's the race towards the sea, which was 7 to 8 meters distant ,” she says.

Early outbreaks

Laid on July 10 on the beach of Sablettes, in the center of Fréjus, the eggs hatched after only 46 days, while the incubation period is usually estimated between 53 and 67 days. In July, another sea turtle had laid eggs, one night later, on another beach in Fréjus but further away from the city center, in Saint-Aygulf. No activity has so far been detected on the site which will nevertheless be continuously monitored from this Thursday.

In 2016, a loggerhead turtle had already come to lay on this same beach in Saint-Aygulf. After two and a half months, four eggs had hatched and the turtles, helped by the scientific teams, were able to reach the sea.

Until now the French coasts were mainly known to be feeding areas frequented by subadult individuals, and not for nesting. These are rather located in Greece, Tunisia and Italy. But the Observatory of marine turtles in metropolitan France has noted a more regular reproduction activity since 2016 for this protected species. He attributes the reason to the increase in surface temperature in the French Mediterranean in recent years.