After a four-year wait for the islanders of Reunion, Emma – one of the island’s two reproductive green turtles – has overcome injury to lay eggs.
Weighing 150 kilos, 30-year-old Emma has become a star of the reproduction process since laying her first eggs in 2007, on a secret beach.
“When they come into the lagoon, it’s because they are juveniles and they come to feed. Once they have reached the adult stage, they will go further away to feed in deeper water, and then they will return to the vicinity of their birth beach to reproduce and the females will come to lay eggs near these beaches,” explained Rachel David, intern at the Kelonia Sea Turtle Observatory.
“This is the case, for example, of the turtle Emma, who comes to lay eggs on a beach in the west of Reunion Island, a beach that remains secret, obviously, to protect Emma and her future children,” she said.
