The marine turtle monitoring programme in the Mozambican component of the Lubombo TFCA has had another successful season.
Ponta do Ouro-Kosi Bay is Africa’s first marine transfrontier conservation area and is part of the Lubombo TFCA. The Ponta do Ouro Partial Marine Reserve’s turtle monitoring programme links up with the one across the border in South Africa’s iSimangaliso Wetland Park, a World Heritage Site, where turtles have been monitored since 1963.
Community members are trained annually to work as turtle monitors to protect, measure and tag the critically endangered leatherback and critically endangered loggerhead turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs.
The Ponta do Ouro marine reserve has a rich diversity of marine life and is the most important leatherback and loggerhead turtle nesting ground along the Mozambican coast. Leatherbacks are the largest sea turtles and classified as critically endangered by the IUCN, while loggerhead sea turtles have been classified as endangered.
In the 2013—2014 season, there were 1 518 recordings of loggerhead and 87 of leatherback turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs, i.e. one turtle may return more than once. This is up from the 2012—2013 season, when there were 1 253 recordings of loggerhead and 52 of leatherback turtles coming ashore. The number of confirmed nests was 910 nests for loggerhead (up from 636) and 84 for leatherback turtles (up from 38 during the previous season).
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