Guardians of S'pore's Sea Turtles

The National Biodiversity Centre is in a race against time to protect every marine turtle it can find as reclamation works shrink nesting habitats.

- Lim Yaohui

In search of a change of scenery, Marine Parade resident Felix Tan decided to jog in the opposite direction of his daily running route, a move that ultimately left him with an encounter of a lifetime.

As serendipity would have it on Aug 11, the 54-year-old turtle enthusiast was stopped in his tracks that evening by one of the world's smaller species of turtles, which had lumbered ashore in East Coast Park to lay her eggs.

"For the first hour, she was moving in circles, flipping sand here and there," said the pilot, adding that the turtle was covering her tracks.

Mr Tan, who had encountered the critically endangered hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) before while diving, added: "It's always a privilege to see wild turtles, that's why I ended up watching her for over two hours."

Reported sightings of hawksbills, along with their tracks and other traces, have averaged about 20 annually from 2021 to 2024, according to the National Parks Board (NParks). Only a handful of these reports involve seeing a live sea turtle.

Despite the relative youth of East Coast Park's reclaimed shoreline, its sands are surprisingly popular with hawksbill turtles, when they make landfall during the annual nesting season from May to October.

Hawksbill turtles help maintain the health of coral reefs by eating sea sponges with their bird-like beaks, which gave the species its name.

The population of hawksbills declined by more than 80 per cent globally over the last century, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature, which estimates that about 8,000 nesting females remain.

In Singapore, the race against time to ensure that sea turtles remain here has become more pressing as their nesting habitat is further disturbed by reclamation in Changi and the upcoming Long Island in front of East Coast Park.

Only the hawksbill is known to lay its eggs here, although the globally endangered green turtle (