Eggs stolen after turtle nests at Penang beach resort

Hotel guests and staff watch egg-laying before dawn but fisheries officers find only a handful of eggs.

GEORGE TOWN: Only a handful of eggs were found after a turtle was spotted laying eggs before dawn at a luxury beach resort in Batu Ferringhi on Thursday.

It is believed that most of the eggs were stolen, a news report said. Turtles usually lay about 100 eggs each time they nest, but Fisheries Department officers recovered only five eggs after digging up the nest to take the eggs for incubation and hatching at the Pantai Kerachut Turtle Sanctuary.

Rasa Sayang Resort communications director Suleiman Tunku Abdul Rahman said the nesting site was on the beach fronting the resort and was cordoned off when the hotel learnt of the turtle landing.

A hotel worker first spotted the female turtle crawling up the beach at about 6am yesterday. It left at about 7.15am. A crowd of hotel employees and guests had by then gathered to capture the moment with their smartphones.

Suleiman said: “We quickly closed the area where the turtle was sighted. There had been a change of guards in between and I think this was when the eggs were stolen,” he said, according to The Star report.

Fisheries officers located the nest at 11am, but found only five eggs. Fisheries officer Mohd Syahrulnizam Ismail said the turtle could have laid her eggs before dawn. “A turtle can lay around 80 to 100 at any one time,” he said, according to the report. “It would take about 30 minutes for it to lay its egg. We can be certain that the turtle will come back again to lay eggs again in the same spot.”

“The turtle sighting is a good omen but it is sad that many eggs are missing,” Suleiman said.

In August a turtle nested on the beach in front of the Golden Sands Resort, a sister hotel to Rasa Sayang. Fisheries officers recovered about 140 eggs then.