74 baby sea turtles reach the sea in the middle of a stormy night

This is the kind of news that lifts the day. During the night of 10 September, at around four in the morning, the second nest of a female turtle named Mona hatched on a beach in Dénia. Seventy-four hatchlings crawled towards the water while it rained, the sea ran rough and the tide came in higher than expected. A team of volunteers had guarded that nest for almost forty days, and was there that night too.

What happened that night

Conditions were about the opposite of ideal. Heavy rain, a churning sea and a tide that unexpectedly washed over part of the beach. That is the moment a nest can be lost: once seawater reaches the eggs, it is over.

It did not happen, because people were standing there. Members of the Eucrante association, together with Dénia town council and the El Portet association, kept the edge of the nest dry and held the water back. At around four in the morning the first hatchling broke through, and after that it went quickly: seventy-four small turtles worked their way across the sand to the surf.

Almost forty days of waiting

What the pictures do not show is the run-up. A loggerhead nest sits in the sand for roughly two months, and in Dénia this one was watched continuously for nearly forty days. That is the work of Campamento Tortuga, a project run by the town council with Eucrante, which this year mobilised 230 volunteers on afternoon and night shifts.

The camp stood on Les Albaranes beach, where four nests lay: two from a turtle called Diana and two from Mona, who returned to Dénia this year. With a fifth nest that was never precisely located, the town reaches about five for the season. For the Valencian coast, that is a remarkable number.

A record-breaking season

This hatching was not the summer’s first surprise. On 27 August two nests on Les Albaranes hatched almost simultaneously, Mona’s and Diana’s, good for around 146 hatchlings in a single night. A simultaneous hatching like that had never been recorded on the Valencian coast.

Turtles nesting here is no longer a coincidence. In recent years the Comunitat Valenciana has recorded more sea turtle nests than anywhere else in Spain, and scientists read it as a sign that the species is extending its breeding range westwards as the sea warms. Behind every nest sits a chain of organisations: alongside Eucrante and the council, the Universitat de València, the Oceanogràfic and the Generalitat.

What to do if you see one

Here is the practical part, and it is short. If you see a turtle on the beach, fresh tracks in the sand or something that looks like a nest: call 112 and keep your distance. Do not touch, do not photograph with a flash, do not form a ring around it. Calling 112 activates the Red de Varamientos, the strandings network in which the Fundación Oceanogràfic rescue team works with researchers from the Universitat de València. That protocol has been in place since 2017.

A number of nests on this coast were found by ordinary beachgoers, so that one phone call genuinely matters. If you are on the beach at night during nesting season, go easy on bright light and music: newly hatched turtles orient themselves by the brightness of the horizon, and a phone torch sends them the wrong way.

Where to see marine life here

Hunting for nests is pointless; those locations are kept quiet for good reasons. What is worth your time is the marine reserve around the Cap de Sant Antoni, between Dénia and Xàbia, where diving and snorkelling are allowed under conditions and the underwater world is noticeably richer than outside it.

You do not have to go far beyond that. The rocky shore at Les Rotes in Dénia needs nothing more than a snorkel for an hour of looking, and from the boats that run along this coast you regularly see dolphins in the summer months. Those are the moments that explain why people spend forty nights sitting beside a hole in the sand.

About the authorMilo Schuijt

Milo Schuijt is an entrepreneur and DJ on the Costa Blanca. He writes about the places where he lives, works and plays: from beach bars to the housing market.