Nearly 100-kg green turtle travels from Malaysia to Côn Đảo to lay eggs
A green turtle weighing nearly 100 kg and carrying a Malaysian tag came ashore on Hòn Bảy Cạnh island in Côn Đảo, an archipelago off southern Vietnam, to lay 108 eggs.
The turtle crawled onto the sandy beach of Hòn Bảy Cạnh and dug a nest to lay its eggs late on the night of April 22. While assisting the turtle, rangers from Côn Đảo National Park spotted a Malaysian tracking tag attached to it. Côn Đảo lies about 550 km from Kuala Terengganu, the nearest Malaysian city.
The tag on the green turtle. (Photo: Côn Đảo National Park).
According to an official at Côn Đảo National Park, the turtle weighs 90-100 kg and is about 40 years old. The country name on its tag is still intact, but the other markings have faded, so not all the information could be read. Six years ago, a nesting female carrying an Indonesian tag also came to Côn Đảo to lay eggs.
Last year, the beaches of Côn Đảo welcomed more than 2,700 nesting females.
The green turtle, commonly known in Vietnam as "vích" (Chelonia mydas), is one of the world's 7 sea turtle species and still occurs and breeds at Côn Đảo. Côn Đảo (formerly a district of Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu province, now a special zone of Ho Chi Minh City) is the main nesting ground for 90% of Vietnam's green turtles. From 2018 to 2023, more than 145,000 hatchlings were hatched here. They were tagged for monitoring by Côn Đảo National Park before being released into the sea.
A nest of freshly laid green turtle eggs. (Photo: Côn Đảo National Park).
The 7 recorded sea turtle species are: the green turtle (Chelonia mydas); the loggerhead turtle ( Caretta caretta); the flatback turtle (Natator depressus); the hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata); the leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), the olive ridley turtle (known in Vietnam as "đú") (Lepidochelys olivacea); and the Kemp's ridley turtle (Lepidochelys kempii). All 7 species are listed in Appendix I of CITES, and all of them (except the flatback turtle) are included in both Appendix I and Appendix II of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS).
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