This season visit Queensland for a spectacular show by the sea turtles

One year after record floods devastated the region, hundreds of sea turtles are fighting back against Mother Nature to make their annual egg-laying pilgrimage on Queensland’s beaches. And thousands of nature-loving tourists from around the world are flocking to get a front row seat to the show.

One of the world’s largest concentrations of nesting marine turtles is proving as tough as nature itself. As many as 350 threatened loggerhead turtles have launched themselves onto a beach along Australia’s Southern Great Barrier Reef region, just one year after flood and cyclone events affected the breeding season.

The Mon Repos Conservation Park near Bundaberg is home to the largest loggerhead turtle rookery in the South Pacific and is a regular nesting site for loggerhead, flatback and green turtles between November and March each year.

Combined with record high tides, the weather events of 2013 caused serious beach erosion, sweeping away an estimated 60 percent of last year’s clutches of eggs.

Now, at the height of the season, the turtles are back and in a spectacular display of Mother Nature’s bounty, hundreds of hatchlings are emerging from their nests and heading into the big ocean unknown.

Between November and January, mature female turtles burrow deep into the sand in the darkness of night to lay as many as 130 eggs per clutch before returning exhausted to the water. The hatchlings then incubate for eight weeks before breaking out of the nest and hurling themselves toward the ocean.

For more than 40 years Queensland’s Environment and Heritage Department has tagged nesting turtles at Mon Repos with special GPS tracking devices, providing vital information about turtle migration and breeding patterns.

Dubbed one of Australia’s greatest conservation and educational experiences, these tours attract as many as 30,000 tourists from around the world, signalling a global trend towards ecotourism and natural attractions.

From now until March, hatchlings will emerge from the sands of Mon Repos and make their own way into the world’s vast oceans.

The Mon Repos Conservation Park near Bundaberg is home to the largest loggerhead turtle rookery in the South Pacific and is a regular nesting site for loggerhead, flatback and green turtles between November and March each year.

Combined with record high tides, the weather events of 2013 caused serious beach erosion, sweeping away an estimated 60 percent of last year’s clutches of eggs.

Now, at the height of the season, the turtles are back and in a spectacular display of Mother Nature’s bounty, hundreds of hatchlings are emerging from their nests and heading into the big ocean unknown.

Between November and January, mature female turtles burrow deep into the sand in the darkness of night to lay as many as 130 eggs per clutch before returning exhausted to the water. The hatchlings then incubate for eight weeks before breaking out of the nest and hurling themselves toward the ocean.