TurtleCare Volunteering Transcript

Female council officer

I'm Julie O'Connor, I'm the Senior Conservation Officer for the Sunshine Coast Council. I coordinate the TurtleCare program, which is a community partnership between the Sunshine Coast Council, the community and the Department of Environment and Resource Management.

Female volunteer 1

TurtleCare is about conserving an endangered species and particularly here on the Sunshine Coast its about conserving the Loggerhead Turtle.

Male volunteer 1

We help the Loggerhead turtles in their breeding season to try and make sure we can get as many as possible of the young ones out to water once they've hatched.

Male volunteer 2

We monitor the Sunshine Coast, which is pretty much the Southerly most point where you get regular reliable nesting of the Loggerhead, and occasional Green turtles as well.

Female council officer

They have been nesting here for millions of years, of course now it's a big issue for them because they're not in such an untouched pristine environment, they're sharing the environment with a lot of people here on the Sunshine Coast, so there's a lot of factors that impact on their nesting.

Female volunteer 2

This is the mesh that we use to cover up the nest once we find the eggs. We have a fox problem here on the beaches between Point Cartwright and Caloundra and this actually allows the hatchlings to come through this mesh but the foxes generally can't get it.

Female council officer

Foxes that were introduced by people in the mid 1800's, are a significant predator of the nesting Loggerhead turtles here and  the major role of the community group, is finding these nests, meshing them with fox exclusion mesh and then just monitoring them until they hatch.

Male volunteer 1

We don't interfere with the young ones as they're going down, we like to see them make their own way down.

Female council officer

They don't need our interference, they've been doing this for millions of years, they don't need our help to get to the beach. It's really important that they walk that distance from the nest to the beach, as they're going they're building strength, which helps them once they reach the water.  Also they're registering the dip and slope of the earths magnetic field as they're walking to the beach as well, which helps them later on in life when they're navigating their way around to different feeding and nesting areas. So it's important that you respect that this is a natural process and just let nature take its course.

Male volunteer 1

I've been on the coast here for about twenty-five years and it's only the last six years that I became aware that Loggerheads and Greens are actually nesting on the beach here. So by taking an interest in things and watching what's happening on our beaches, we can help keep the beaches clean for the future.

Female volunteer 2

Everyone can do their bit to help the turtles, if you're a local or a holiday maker and you're walking along the beach and you see rubbish, pick it up. I pick up probably a kilo of rubbish every day off the beaches, there's a lot of plastic out there. If you're fishing don't leave your fishing line around as fishing line can hang around the environment for 600 years, capturing things and entangling turtles. And also if you're a local, during nesting season and hatchling season which is February through to April, if you're lucky enough to see hatchings and you have torches with you, keep them off, we don't like flash photography and torches because they tend to disorientate the turtles as well.

Female council officer

The hatchlings respond very well to any light, their natural instinct is to go towards the ocean, it's the sound of the ocean that attracts them and also they go to the brightest light, lowest on the horizon. So if you've got torches around on the sand, they'll start turning around and going towards those and it really can be quite disastrous for them because they're wasting valuable energy chasing lights all over the sand when they should be going directly to the ocean. If your down on the beach and you see a female turtle coming up to nest, the best thing to do is to just sit down right where you are as any movement may startle her and she might be quite likely to go back. It's a great idea we always say to have the TurtleCare contact phone number in your mobile if you're a regular beach goer, which is 0437 559 067. You can call one of the volunteers, just sit quietly and call that number and we'll get volunteers out to see if that turtle is tagged. We also wont disturb the turtle until she actually starts to lay and once she's finished that process we'll measure her, tag her if she hasn't been tagged already and then let her go back to the ocean. Then we'll mesh the nest.

The volunteers are fantastic, they're wonderful people and some of them have been doing this many years. You can see in the background, the Charlies Angels Gang which they like to call themselves (laughs).

Female volunteer 3

We know that the turtles have come up and laid their eggs for a long time and they don't really need us to interfere but what they do need is for us to protect them. And it's mainly to protect them from what man has done or with the foxes coming in and things like that.

Female council officer

Without the community on this project we wouldn't be having the success we're having with protecting the turtles.

Female volunteer 4

And there's a lot of people helping and its good and its good for our environment here and I wouldn't give it up for anything (laughs).

TurtleCare Sunshine Coast is a voluntary organisation formed in 2005 in response to an identified need to protect the needs of marine turtles nesting on Sunshine Coast beaches.

To learn more about TurtleCare and what you can do to protect turtles on the Sunshine Coast please do contact us >.