Among those rookeries, the east coast of Barrow Island has 1,700 nesting females per year, Mundabullangana Beach on the mainland coast has 1,600 nesting females per year, Eighty Mile Beach has hundreds to thousands of nesting females per year, and Cape Dommett has hundreds to thousands of nesting females per year. Large segments of the northwestern Australia coastline remain un-surveyed, but major rookeries have been confirmed recently.

Although they nest on a very diverse range of beach types, many of the largest flatback rookeries occur on low-energy beaches that are often sheltered behind broad intertidal zones. Thus, the sensitive flatbacks rarely nest at beaches that are fringed with coral reefs, preferring open mainland beaches or inshore continental islands where they are less likely to collide with obstructions or to be scraped by an abrasive substrate. Flatback shells are covered with only lightly keratinized scutes that tend to be softer and more susceptible to injury than are those of other hard-shelled turtle species. In morphological terms, their pancaked bodies and flared carapace margins-like hydrofoils-are not observed in any other sea turtle species. In the short time since then, science not only has renamed the flatback, but also has seemingly rediscovered Australia’s own sea turtle.įlatbacks are unique among sea turtles in form and function, in life cycle, and in life history. Following decades of research, Colin Limpus and his research group at Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Australia, redescribed the species, giving it a genus of its own, thereafter known as Natator depressus. Until 1988, the Australian flatback was still so poorly understood that it was considered to be a congener of the green turtle, despite what we now know are vast differences between the two species. By Mark Hamann, Colin Limpus, Kellie Pendoley, Chloe Schauble, Jannie Sperling and Jeanette Wyneken

Seaturtle breathing