But doing this is easier said than done.Īfter the unrelenting rains of the Big Wet, even powerful off-road vehicles can get stuck on muddy bush tracks or boggy stretches of sand. Flooded rivers are wide and dangerous to cross, not least because they are home to crocodiles. That means researchers and Indigenous rangers need to find, study and secure the nests as quickly as possible. This is when the mother turtle’s tracks are still visible to predators and when the scent of the eggs is strongest. Nests are most vulnerable in the first few days after the eggs are laid. The landscape can stay flooded for months after the monsoons. That is why mothers lay so many eggs in each nest and why keeping nests safe is so important. The more that hatch and make to the water, the more chance a few will reach adulthood and breeding age, which in some species can be around 30 years. Once a baby turtle enters the ocean there are hundreds of ways it can die. But nature’s odds are stacked against them. Hatchlings will emerge about seven weeks later and inch their way across the sand and into the ocean. If left undisturbed, the eggs will incubate.

Each lays as many as 100 eggs, covers them with sand and then crawls back into the sea. They dig nesting holes with their flippers: some in the dunes, some on the beach. The turtle life cycle starts when adult females drag themselves out of the warm waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria and onto Cape York’s beaches. “With this system, what normally takes one month of monitoring work on the ground takes two hours using a helicopter or drone,” says Justin Perry from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO. Research, management techniques and technologies being developed in Australia could potentially help protect multiple turtle nesting regions around the world. There are only seven marine turtle species on the planet, and all are threatened by human activity, environmental changes and predators. Three species nest on the west coast of Cape York – the Hawksbill, the Flatback and the Olive Ridley. Remote Cape York Peninsula on Australia’s far northeast corner. With precise near real-time location data, rangers can move faster to safeguard the nests and thousands of hatchlings so turtle populations can bounce back in the years ahead. Now an alliance of Indigenous landowners and scientists is applying a mix of aerial surveys, AI and cloud technologies and traditional knowledge to locate otherwise hard-to-find turtle nests before the pigs do. Thousands have been lost this way every year. Unless teams of Indigenous rangers find and protect them first, they can be easy prey for predators, particularly feral pigs. This prolonged isolation spells big trouble for the survival chances of some tiny residents on the western shores of Cape York Peninsula – endangered baby turtles. Overland travel can be slow and difficult, and sometimes impossible. Vast tracts of terrain can remain cut off by floods and mud many months after the rains have stopped and the skies have cleared. The torrential downpour also dramatically transforms the region’s spectacular landscape. Local people call the year-end drenching the “Big Wet” and welcome the respite from relentless scorching summer heat. Life slows down a lot when monsoonal rains sweep over Australia’s tropical north.

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