25-26 Turtle season - Coolum & North Shore Coast Care

The 2025-26 sea turtle nesting season has been one of our largest on record, with volunteer efforts resulting in 4,828 hatchlings emerging from their nests.

Over the course of the season, 73 nesting events were recorded, resulting in 47 successful nests and 26 “Turn Arounds” where turtles emerged from the ocean but returned without nesting. These events are a reminder of how sensitive nesting behaviour can be to disturbance. Artificial light along the coastline can disorient nesting turtles and hatchlings, making it important to keep beaches as dark as possible at night by switching off or shielding unnecessary lighting. It is also essential that turtles are never approached during nesting, as even well meaning observation can interrupt or deter egg laying. Maintaining healthy beach vegetation is equally important, as dune plants play a key role in stabilising sand, reducing erosion, and protecting nesting habitat from storm damage and collapse.

One of the highlights of the season was the high number of green turtle nests. We documented 12 green turtle nests, our highest number in a season to date. Remarkably, this local achievement coincides with a significant global conservation milestone. In 2025, the green sea turtle was downgraded from Endangered to Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, becoming the first sea turtle species to achieve such a recovery. While ongoing protection remains essential, both globally and here on our local beaches, this season’s results demonstrate what decades of conservation effort can achieve.

Nest success was high, with an average incubation success rate of 84%, well within the range considered "very high" for sea turtle conservation programs. One nest even achieved a perfect 100% success rate, with every egg proving viable and producing a hatchling!

The season also highlighted the incredible dedication of our volunteers. Over the season, volunteers conducted daily beach patrols from Pincushion through to Alexandria Bay. Their daily walks over the 6 month long season accumulated to a total distance of 6,902 kilometres. To put that into perspective, that’s the equivalent of walking across Australia from the east coast to the west coast and back again!

We had a total of 104 volunteers contribute 5,359 hours of beach patrols, monitoring and data collection over a period of more than six months. This incredible effort represents an in-kind contribution of approximately $278,668 to turtle conservation.

We were also delighted to welcome back previously tagged nesting turtles and to add seven new tags to turtles using our beaches, helping build our understanding of local turtle populations for years to come.

None of this would have been possible without our volunteers, even working in the wild weather. So we would like to say a big thank you to every volunteer who rose before dawn, walked our beaches, monitored nests and shared in the excitement to make this season such a success.