The story of our turtle conservation project began when Sylvia and I visited Scuba Junkies, a dive shop, in Sibatan, Sabah, Malaysia. This dive shop had create a successful turtle hatchery and inspired to create our own conversation efforts in El Nido.
In December 2016, we were given the opportunity to start our hatchery program using a small parcel of land in the Nacpan Beach with Bash Lory. Prior to initiating our program we observed locals in the village selling turtle eggs for food. With an average of 90 eggs per nest selling for 5 PHP per egg, one nest could yield over 450 PHP income.
We decided to act fast and make a change. Initially we offered 1000 peso per original, untouched nest. We would then carefully relocate the eggs to our hatchery by our trained staff. We were relatively unsuccessful at that time as locals were still seen selling the eggs.
Eventually we increased the amount per nest to 3,000 PHP and saw a drastic change. Over night a group of locals began patrolling the beach at night to locate and protect turtle nests until we were able to relocate the eggs the following day.
In our first season we relocated 1000 eggs and released 251 hatchlings. We believe the high mortality rate was due to lack of experience in the relocation process and artificial nest preparation.
Starting as a grassroots project we’ve moved into a larger network joining the El Nido Marine Turtle NetworkWe are starting the nesting season this year with substantially more knowledge and experience. We have had Jamie Dichaves, a turtle conservationist from Ayala, Ten Knots Corporation give informative seminars and training on the life and protection of turtles to our team and locals. Together with the village, there is a collective effort to protect the sea turtles nesting at Nacpan, and ensure the impact of the ever increasing development here is minimized. Since our first nest on November 11, 2017 we have relocated over 1,500 eggs from 15 nests, with more coming on a daily basis.
We project to have over 3,500 eggs relocated by the end of the season (usually around April), with a projected success rate of at least 60%.
As of now this project is entirely privately funded by P4P Sunmai Nacpan and are yet to open the program to donations from tourists or other companies. We hope one day we will start an Adopt a Turtle program allowing others to participate and support our efforts.
El Nido Marine Turtle Network
Note: This article was originally featured in ESTEL Magazine Issue 2 and written by Henry Hsu of Sunmai Bar.
