Since the start of the 2012 tur­tle nest­ing sea­son in March, 385 new leatherback tur­tles have been tagged at Matu­ra Beach. Two hun­dred and one "re­turn tur­tles" have al­so been logged. This was re­port­ed by tur­tle con­ser­va­tion group, Na­ture Seek­ers, who re­cent­ly host­ed 70 em­ploy­ees of At­lantic and their fam­i­lies on a late-night tag­ging and mon­i­tor­ing vis­it to Matu­ra Beach. On the vis­it, 40 tur­tles were sight­ed by Na­ture Seek­ers and their guests. "It is too ear­ly to say how this com­pares with last year's sea­son," said Den­nis Sam­my, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Na­ture Seek­ers. "In 2011, there were 7,322 nest­ing events at Matu­ra. So far for 2012, up un­til May 8, we have logged 1,439 nest­ing events." A nest­ing event is the sci­en­tif­ic term used to de­scribe each at­tempt by a fe­male tur­tle to ex­ca­vate a nest and lay eggs. Sam­my said this in­for­ma­tion was col­lect­ed dur­ing the morn­ing count sur­vey, which is done every two days over the sea­son.

On av­er­age, leatherback tur­tles nest sev­en times in the sea­son, at in­ter­vals of about nine days. Na­ji­la Elias-Sam­lals­ingh, At­lantic's se­nior en­vi­ron­men­tal spe­cial­ist, said At­lantic's sup­port for tur­tle con­ser­va­tion helped the glob­al tur­tle pop­u­la­tion, as well as the lo­cal beach com­mu­ni­ties where the tur­tles nest. "At­lantic is very in­ter­est­ed in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the growth of the glob­al sea tur­tle pop­u­la­tion. We want our chil­dren's chil­dren to con­tin­ue to see these great ma­rine voy­agers. We al­so want to help com­mu­ni­ties like Matu­ra de­vel­op sus­tain­able eco-tourism op­por­tu­ni­ties re­lat­ed to the tur­tles." The Na­tion­al Sea Tur­tle Tag­ging and Mon­i­tor­ing Pro­gramme gath­ers in­for­ma­tion about the pop­u­la­tion of nest­ing leatherbacks, hawks­bill and green tur­tles in T&T, and about the res­i­dent pop­u­la­tion of hawks­bill and green tur­tles for­ag­ing on the reefs and sea grass beds around To­ba­go. The da­ta gath­ered con­tributes to the over­all man­age­ment of sea tur­tles lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and glob­al­ly.