Where possible, turtles will be tagged and the unique identification number recorded before they are released. We then take the turtles to the release location where they are released on the beach close to the water’s edge and allowed to crawl to the sea. This process is called ‘imprinting’ and is considered critical to development of navigational cues which enable them to return to their beach of birth when they begin to nest later in life.
One success story is a turtle named Adi Mamanuca who hatched on Treasure Island, she was released with a satellite tag in 2008 and her journey was tracked for 270 days when her signal was lost. She recently returned to our sister island Bounty where we were able to record the sighting and start tracking her again.
We have turtle feeding displays every day and weekly talks by our resident Environment Team. Kid’s Club have great fun helping to find exciting additions to keep our turtle pools looking great and the turtles’ diet nice and varied. We participate in local, national and regional initiatives to increase understanding of this species and assist efforts to protect them. We work with partners and specialists in Fiji, the Pacific, and globally to continually improve our turtle conservation programme and encourage wider uptake of best practice methodologies. We actively seek and maintain relationships with universities, aquariums, zoos, scientists and other institutions to ensure the best possible care for all our wildlife.
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