Seychelles hawksbill’s journey to Kenya surprises scientists |10 December 2025
Image 1: Badly injured female hawksbill turtle, previously tagged while nesting at St Joseph Atoll in Seychelles, washed ashore dead on a beach near Kipini Kenya on August 17, 2025 (Photo by Abigail Kidd - © Ulinzi Africa Foundation)
A female hawksbill turtle tagged by researchers from the Save Our Seas Foundation D’Arros Research Centre (SOSF-DRC) in St Joseph Atoll has washed ashore on a beach near Kipini, Kenya.
Identified by her flipper tags, the turtle was likely killed by fishing trawlers before drifting ashore.
Her recovery has extended the known foraging range of adult hawksbills from Seychelles eastward to the Kenyan coast.
“This discovery shows us how much more there is to learn about these fascinating animals,” says Dr Jeanne Mortimer, affectionately known in Seychelles as Madame Torti. Dr Mortimer has been at the forefront of sea turtle conservation in Seychelles since the 1980s and helped establish long-term monitoring of their populations.
On August 18, 2025, Dr Mortimer received a WhatsApp message with photos of the dead turtle. The injuries suggested she had been caught in trawling nets. More importantly, the flipper tags confirmed she had been tagged during the 2024–25 nesting season at Banc Coco in St Joseph Atoll.
This marks only the second recorded case of a post-nesting adult female hawksbill from Seychelles being found outside the country’s waters, the first being in Tanzania in 2010.
“We know that after nesting, adult females travel to distant feeding grounds where they spend most of their lives,” explains Dr Mortimer. “Satellite tracking has shown that most remain in deep waters near Seychelles, far from fishing activity. But this record proves that some venture much further afield.”
While satellite tracking has provided valuable insights, it is costly. Flipper tagging remains a cost-effective method for long-term monitoring, and the SOSF-DRC programme has been tagging turtles since 2004, supported by the Save Our Seas Foundation since 2012.
“Seychelles is a critical nesting ground for hawksbill turtles,” says SOSF founder Abdulmohsen Abdulmalik Al-Sheikh. “This extraordinary finding highlights the importance of sustained tagging programmes to uncover the hidden journeys of these endangered animals.”
Contributed