We're raising money to protect the turtles in Mozambique! 100% of your donation goes to employing guards to guard the turtle nests 24/7 and ensuring a turtle patrol goes out every day to locate and protect new nests.

There are 7 species of sea turtles around the globe. Were lucky enough that 5 of these are found in Mozambiques waters! Of those 5, 2 species nest on our shores: loggerheads and leatherbacks. Currently there is no protection for these animals in our area and the nests are vulnerable to poaching, foot traffic, cars, light pollution and scavengers. With your help, we can post 24/7 guards to ensure the hatchlings get as good of a chance as possible to make it back to the ocean.

Clutch sizes vary a lot, but leatherbacks generally lay 50 100 eggs, whereas loggerheads lay slightly more, averaging 100 150. The eggs are soft so whilst there are some projects around the world that relocate nests, LTO has decided not to do this because of the high mortality rates when turtle eggs are touched.

Females will generally return to the same beach they were laid on, to nest themselves! However, turtles are slow growers it takes loggerheads 20 25 years to reach maturity, and leatherbacks 15 25 years. Turtles also have low survival rates, its estimated about 1 in 1000 hatchlings make it to adulthood. That is why it is so important to protect these animals!

Our turtle patrols are out every morning, before sunrise to locate and post guards at any new nests found. Were aiming for as close to 100% survival rate as possible. With the combination of patrols, guards and educational workshops were optimistic well achieve this!

Nests

Nest 1 | Species: Loggerhead | Guards: Sam, Inácio & Francisco

Nest 2 | Species: Leatherback | Guards: Bonifácio, Deocliciano & Samuel

Nest 3 | Species: Loggerhead | Guards: Lucas, Luís & Pedro

Nest 4 | Species: Loggerhead | Guards: Elton, Raimundo & Six

Costs

It costs about £400 to employ 3 guards on 1 nest on 8 hour shifts to ensure 24/7 guarding of a nest from laying to hatching. There are 4 nests laid right now so that's £1600 total.

It costs £475 to pay for 2 trained people to walk the beach and locate, record, photograph and protect new nests, everyday for the entire of turtle nesting season (November - March.).

This brings our total costs to £2075. If we had more turtles nest this cost would increase.