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Yakushima NP, Kagoshima
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A loggerhead hatchling PIT-tagged at Yakushima in 2008 turned up off Iwate in 2018, 60.8 cm long. Its tag gave scientists the first known age for a wild, non-head-started loggerhead in the North Pacific.
Tags revealed that 2 loggerheads from Yakushima traveled as far as the Philippines. One was identified at Nagata-hama the following year—a remarkable link between a distant feeding route and this nesting coast.
In a homing study, researchers moved 5 nesting females from Yakushima to a beach in Fukutsu, northern Kyushu. By 2014, 4 had returned to beaches in Nagata—evidence of a strong connection to the area.
Researchers used 27 years of Umigame-kan records to compare loggerheads feeding in shallow waters with those feeding offshore. The shallow-water group produced 2.4 times more hatchlings over their reproductive lifetimes.
In Nagata, eggs collected at Maehama were sold to buy supplies for the local elementary school; the right to gather eggs at Inakahama was once auctioned to local businesses. Protection rules later prohibited egg collection.
The volunteer group behind Umigame-kan began in Nagata in 1985, when beach sand was still being excavated for building materials and beaches had shrunk to a fraction of their 1960s extent. Its exhibition hall opened in 1999.
Umigame-kan’s tagging records show that loggerheads lay eggs an average of 3 times in a nesting season. One individual was recorded laying 6 times—a busy summer for a turtle that usually returns only every few years.
The museum’s exhibits include a preserved juvenile leatherback turtle measuring 160 cm. Umigame-kan began displaying this unusually large young specimen in 2011.
After all the pines on Inakahama died in 1993, Umigame-kan began planting a shade grove. The trees also help screen the beach from vehicle lights, which can disturb turtles coming ashore to nest.
