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Yakushima NP, Kagoshima
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Tagging records from Yakushima show loggerheads travelling as far as the Philippines. One of those turtles was found back on a Nagata-area beach the following year.
The 10-hectare Ramsar wetland of Nagata-hama includes Inakahama and 2 neighboring beaches. Together, they account for 30–40% of Japan’s loggerhead turtle landings and form the North Pacific’s largest loggerhead nesting ground.
A nest’s hatchlings may spend 3–7 days climbing through as much as 60 cm of sand before emerging together at night. The beach’s most important turtle journey begins out of sight.
Sea-turtle eggs once fed Nagata and were gathered for sale, but local accounts recall harvesters leaving some to hatch. The former Kamiyaku Town adopted a nature-protection ordinance in 1973, before Kagoshima’s 1988 prefecture-wide ban.
Nagata’s traditional Tobiuo-maneki ritual brought women to the beach on lunar April 8 to pray for flying-fish bounty. Singing, they waved decorated bamboo, then visited Ebisu’s shrine near the river mouth.
Tagging at Yakushima revealed a patient rhythm: a female loggerhead lays about 3 clutches in one nesting season, then typically returns to breed every 2–3 years.
After digging first a roomy body pit and then an egg chamber, a nesting loggerhead can lay 100–140 eggs in about 40 minutes. The eggs are roughly the size of ping-pong balls.
Most of Yakushima’s coast is rocky, but Inakahama has a pale shore of coarse, weathered granite sand. Local guides point out that the grains brush off bare feet instead of clinging.
During Nagata’s Takemairi pilgrimage, people first cleanse themselves in the sea, then carry sand from the shore up to a mountain shrine. The custom connects this beach with the sacred peaks above the village.
Local protection work includes counting turtle tracks, cleaning the shore, fencing nesting areas, and planting or tending pines to screen road lights that could deter turtles from coming ashore.
Surveys found that sand at Inakahama shifts seasonally from southwest toward northeast. Researchers paired GPS beach mapping with infrared cameras to study how the changing shoreline relates to turtle nesting.
A 2001–02 study at Inakahama found lower hatchling emergence in high-foot-traffic areas. The researchers linked greater accumulated trampling pressure on nests with poorer emergence success.
Kuchinoerabujima makes a handy marker for the setting sun: looking out from Inakahama, the sun sets to the island’s right in summer and to its left in winter.
