Tulum’s best season has just begun!
No, we are not talking about summer in Tulum, although that has arrived too! We are referring to the annual sea turtle nesting season! Tulum is world known by being one of the most amazing places to see sight turtles while they journey back to land to lay their eggs. The season starts in May and goes all the way to October.
In these months, Tulum becomes home for amazing sea turtles species like the Loggerhead and the Green Turtle. The female sea turtles travel great distances all around the globe to return to the same beach where they hatched on.
These amazing creatures have been on our planet for more than 150 million years, are one of the most long-lived members of the reptile family and can lay up to 200 eggs at once. Their visit usually come after dusk where they come out of the water with their flippers and find the perfect place to dig their fifty or sixty inch nest. It takes a very high amount of energy from these incredible creatures to nest, the process can take up to 8 hours to complete. Once they bury their eggs, they start their journey back to the ocean.
But the story does not end there, about forty-five to sixty days afterwards, baby turtles emerge from the sand. These turtles are very vulnerable at this stage, they turn into a very easy prey for birds, local animals and even humans. Therefore the most complicated part of their life is reaching the sea before getting devoured by a predator. Less than 1% lives long enough to come back home and nest. That is why nearly all species of sea turtle are classified as Endangered.
If you are planning a trip to Tulum to experience this wonderful season, help us protect our turtles. We encourage you to be mindful during the nesting process and take into consideration the following recommendations to help our turtles in their journey:
If you are lucky to find a female turtle while their nesting process, please be very quiet and keep still. You may safely admire them from a distance of ten meters.
Keep in mind that attempting to touch the sea turtles is highly forbidden, this may scare them away before ending their nesting process.
Please do not use cellphone lights, shine a torch nor smoke near the turtles. As a matter of fact, try to reduce as much light pollution as possible. Turtles are very sensible to light and smoke, this could stress them.
We encourage you to keep our beaches and sea clean. Discarded straws, plastic bags, beer packaging, fishing lines and other garbage floating in the water are lethal to sea turtles and other marine life.
If you encounter turtles nesting or baby turtles hatching, please do not take pictures with flash. This may be very harming for their eyes.
We have also taken some measures to help our turtles during this season. Please note these measures only apply during the months from May through October.
We currently changed our beach lights to red light bulbs.
We could interrupt music and/or turn off lights in our restaurant if a turtle is nesting in our beach. We would communicate it with each one of our guest and can invite you to watch the scene from a safe distance.
We will gather all our beach furniture to upper shore at night, to give space for turtles to find a perfect spot to nest.
If we find a turtle nest within our property, we will not be placing furniture over the nest until the eggs hatches. Please note this may take forty-five to sixty days.
The temporary red bulbs in our Distrito Beach Club, to not confuse the baby turtles, so they can find their way into the ocean.
The Yucatan Peninsula is a very important area for sea turtles, because it offers many nesting beaches and has high nutritive feeding banks. So in your visit observe, absorb and enjoy – only a few people have the chance to be part of this beautiful process!
See you at Distrito!
