“We’re thrilled to announce that over the 2005/6 season we recorded over 2 000 Loggerhead nestings in the project area. This is the highest number recorded in 43 years,” says Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife manager, Richard Penn Sawers, who is also the project leader of the WWF/Green Trust Turtle Monitoring and Community Development Project.

South Africa has the world’s longest-running programme for the monitoring of two of the largest sea turtles – the Leatherback and the Loggerhead.

The programme was initiated 43 years ago along the northern KwaZulu Natal- and southern Mozambique coastline. For the past 20 years WWF and The Green Trust have been supporting sea turtle conservation.

The core project area spans 56 kilometres between Kosi Mouth and Mabibi.

Leatherback populations are also doing nicely here, with an average of 70-80 nestings per season. Leatherbacks are the largest sea turtles in the world, growing up to three metres in length.

One of the main contributing factors to the stability of South Africa’s sea turtle populations is that they breed almost entirely within the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park – a Marine Protected Area (MPA) and World Heritage site.

Elsewhere, populations are rapidly declining, due to the consumption of turtle meat and eggs in poverty-stricken coastal areas and because of industrial trawling and longline fishing activities.

The overall aim of this project is to conserve and manage the populations through community involvement in turtle monitoring, conservation, tourism and education.

An Eco-Schools programme has been introduced at several schools in the project area, where the Leatherback has been adopted as a flagship species.

“Without the sea, we are nothing. That is why we must protect the sea and the turtles. They are amazing, quiet animals that are so important to the future of all the people living here,” says Simanga Mageba from northern KwaZulu Natal who is helping to manage the project and coordinating its sixteen monitors.

The monitors cover the 56-kilometre project area every morning and every evening from 15th October to 15th March - which is when the sea turtles breed.

The next challenge for the project is to extend sea turtle conservation up the Mozambique coastline. “Conservation legislation in Mozambique is very poor but we are working hard to extend the conservation area.”

Let’s hope in another 43 years time we can look back to this time as a giant stride for marine conservation.