Sea Turtles: Where to See, Swim With & Protect Them — Updated as I Travel

Midnight, pitch dark, a beach in Cape Verde. I’m crouched a few feet from a creature going through movements her species has repeated for over 100 million years — watching her dig a pit in the sand with her back flippers, entirely by instinct, on maybe her twentieth or thirtieth time ever doing this herself. Nobody’s talking. Nobody’s got a torch on. The only sound is sand hitting sand, and somewhere behind me, someone forgetting to breathe.

Rewind three years, and it’s Barbados — salt water in my mouth, laughing through my snorkel because a small hawksbill won’t leave us alone, drifting from person to person like she’s decided we’re the interesting ones for once.

Rewind further still, back further than I can honestly remember in detail — though the feeling’s stayed with me — and it’s the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. A huge turtle the size of a coffee table has just cruised past my face like I’m not even there, entirely unbothered, off to eat some seagrass. That was the first time I ever saw one, and probably the reason I’ve been chasing them ever since without quite realising it.

Three encounters, three different moods, and somehow they still feel like the same story told backwards. This post is where I’m collecting every turtle encounter I have, wherever it happens, updating it every time I go somewhere new. Consider it a work in progress — bookmark it if turtles are your thing too.

Meet the Turtles: seven species, one very long history

Before the trip reports, a quick detour, because it genuinely changes how you see these animals once you know it: sea turtles have been doing this — this exact thing, nesting on beaches, migrating across oceans — for over 100 million years. Their ancestors watched dinosaurs go extinct.

What you’re looking at on a beach at midnight isn’t just “a turtle”; it’s one of the oldest continuous acts in the animal kingdom, still happening, somewhere, on many nights across the world.

The seven species

There are seven species, and once you know what to look for, they’re easy to tell apart. Three of them you’ll run into on most reef trips or nesting tours; the other four are each a kind of extreme — the biggest, the smallest, the most numerous, the most localised.

🟢 The three you’re most likely to encounter

• Loggerhead — big blocky head, powerful jaws built for crunching shellfish, reddish-brown heart-shaped shell. Widespread in temperate and subtropical waters. The biggest nesting concentrations are in Florida and Cape Verde, with smaller but significant sites in Oman, Greece, and eastern Australia. This is who I met on Sal (Cape Verde).

• Green turtle — rounder, more oval shell, and a diet that turns almost entirely to seagrass and algae as an adult (the name comes from the greenish fat under the shell, not the shell itself — slightly disappointing trivia, I know). The most widely distributed of the seven, nesting everywhere from Costa Rica and Hawaii to Oman and Cyprus, with Raine Island in Australia hosting the largest green turtle nesting aggregation on the planet.

• Hawksbill — the showy one. Narrow, hooked beak, and a shell with a marbled “tortoiseshell” pattern so striking it nearly got the species poached out of existence for jewellery. Lives on coral reefs across the tropics — the Caribbean, the Seychelles, the Great Barrier Reef, Southeast Asia — mostly eating sponges. This is who I swam with in Barbados.

🔴 The four extremes

• Leatherback — the giant of the family. Up to 1.8 metres and 640 kg, with a soft, rubbery shell instead of a hard one, and a taste for jellyfish so committed they’ll dive over 1,000 metres chasing it. Found in every ocean except the Arctic and Antarctic — the largest nesting colony in the world is in Gabon, West Africa, with other major sites in Trinidad and Costa Rica.

• Kemp’s Ridley — the smallest and most endangered of the seven, famous for nesting in huge synchronised daytime crowds called arribadas. Has by far the most restricted range of any sea turtle: it nests almost exclusively on one stretch of beach at Rancho Nuevo, Mexico, plus a smaller secondary site in Texas.

• Olive ridley — the most numerous turtle on Earth, also known for arribadas, seen across tropical waters worldwide but with its biggest nesting beaches in Odisha, India, and along Mexico‘s and Costa Rica‘s Pacific coasts.

• Flatback — found only in Australian waters, with a smooth, upturned shell edge and, frankly, the least glamorous name of the seven. It’s the one true homebody of the family: it nests solely on northern Australia’s coast and never strays beyond the continental shelf shared by Australia, Papua New Guinea, and southern Indonesia.

How to tell them apart

Quick ID trick: Shell shape and head size are your best clues.
✴️ Big blocky head = loggerhead.
✴️ Hooked beak and patterned shell = hawksbill.
✴️ Smooth, rubbery, ridged shell = leatherback.
✴️ Rounder, olive-brown shell, smaller head = green turtle.

Why do they travel so far?

It’s something I wondered about myself for a long time, and the answer is a bit more romantic than “instinct.”

Turtles feed and nest in completely different places, and those places are often oceans apart — a decent meal (seagrass, jellyfish, sponges, depending on species) and a safe, warm, undisturbed patch of sand rarely exist within easy reach of each other. So adults spend most of the year quietly feeding, often thousands of miles from any beach, then undertake enormous migrations when it’s time to breed.

Here’s the part that gets me every time 😮: Most females don’t just nest on a beach; they return to nest on the beach — the exact one where they themselves hatched, decades earlier, sometimes bypassing dozens of closer, perfectly good beaches to get there.

Scientists think they imprint on the Earth’s magnetic field as hatchlings and carry that as a kind of internal compass for the rest of their lives. And they don’t get many chances to use it — clutch frequency varies by species, but loggerheads, the ones I watched on Sal, are estimated to lay only 30 to 75 clutches across their entire adult life, spread over a couple of dozen nesting seasons that can be years apart.

Every one of those trips is still a gamble — a bet that the exact same patch of sand that worked once will still be safe enough to work again.

How long they live, and what they eat

Most species reach 50 to 80 years, some pushing past 100, and they’re painfully slow to grow up — most don’t breed until they’re 20 to 35.

Sea turtles’ diet depends entirely on species: loggerheads and ridleys crunch crabs and molluscs, greens turn largely vegetarian as adults, hawksbills specialise in sponges, and leatherbacks eat almost nothing but jellyfish their whole lives.

The hatchlings

It’s such a key part of the whole story that it deserves its own mention. I haven’t had the chance to see this part myself yet, but it’s on my list.

Once a female has covered her nest and gone, that’s it — she never comes back, and the eggs are left to incubate entirely on their own for somewhere between 45 and 70 days, depending on the species and how warm the sand is (warmer sand means faster incubation, and — more on this below — more female hatchlings). When they’re ready, the hatchlings break out of their shells using a tiny temporary tooth called a caruncle, then spend several more days digging their way up through the sand together, usually timing their emergence for a cooler night rather than the heat of the day.

Once they’re out, it’s an all-or-nothing sprint: 10 to 30 minutes flat-out across open sand to reach the water, with the whole nest going at once — safety in numbers against whatever’s waiting for them. It doesn’t work for most of them. The commonly cited figure is that only 1 in 1,000 hatchlings survives to adulthood. However, more recent research suggests the real number could be anywhere between 1 in 400 and 1 in 2,000 depending on the population. Either way, the odds are brutal — which is exactly why every nest matters.

Threats and predators

The odds are stacked against them from hour one. On the sand, crabs and birds pick them off during that short, exposed crawl to the water — and increasingly, hotel lights disorient them entirely, overriding their instinct to head for the brightest horizon (which should be the sea, not a beachfront bar). The moment they actually reach the water, a whole new set of predators takes over: fish are waiting just offshore for exactly this, and the first “swim frenzy” out to open water is brutal — only a small fraction of hatchlings survive it.

Adults have almost no natural predators beyond the occasional big shark — their real threats are ours: fishing bycatch, plastic debris mistaken for jellyfish, poaching, coastal development swallowing nesting beaches, and a genuinely unsettling twist from climate change — the temperature of the sand determines the sex of the hatchlings, and warming beaches are already tilting populations heavily female.

Where I’ve Seen and Swum With Them

Three trips, three very different encounters, in the order I actually had them.

1. The Great Barrier Reef, Australia — swimming with turtles

This one’s the oldest by a long way — about 20 years now — and I’ll be upfront about it: I’ve only got a single photo from that tour, taken by the guide (this was back when underwater cameras weren’t something you carried around unless you were a professional). It doesn’t have a single turtle or fish in it 😢.

Some of the details have gone soft over time, as memories do when you’re not the sort of person who journals every day (I wasn’t, back then — I am now, which is partly why this post exists). But I was there, snorkelling off the reef, when I saw turtles gliding by several times. They moved slowly and seemed completely unbothered by the crowd of wide-eyed tourists watching through their masks. It was honestly a relief to witness. A reef where the wildlife appears relaxed around people indicates that it is in good health.

I’m not going to pad this out with fake specifics I don’t actually remember, because that’s not what this post is for. What I can tell you is the feeling has stuck with me for years despite the details fading — which might be the best argument I can make for going. I’ll properly update this entry with real, practical detail next time I’m back.

Why it’s still the best thing I’ve done

One thing I will say without any hesitation, twenty years on: it’s still one of the best things I’ve ever done, and I’m not even a strong swimmer. And honestly, this isn’t really about the turtles specifically — it’s the sheer amount of everything else going on around them. Coral in colours that don’t look real, fish in numbers and shapes I didn’t have names for, and that particular feeling of not knowing where to look next because something is happening in every direction at once. I’ve been snorkelling in plenty of places since, and nothing has come close to matching it. If you only ever do one reef trip in your life, there’s a reason this one keeps showing up on every list of the best in the world.

2. Barbados — swimming with turtles

Many years after Australia, and a completely different mood: daylight snorkelling with turtles that live in the shallow bays year-round, no season required, no waiting for darkness.

I wrote the full trip up in 10 Days in Barbados: A Dream Holiday — this is the turtle-specific part of that story.

• Type of encounter: Swimming/snorkelling, boat and shore.

• When to go: Whenever suits you. Barbados’ hawksbills and greens feed in the same coastal patches all year, so there’s no calendar to work around.

• What it’s actually like: small boat, west coast, and within minutes of hitting the water there were turtles everywhere — drifting past close enough to touch (don’t), popping up for air a metre from my mask like it was the most normal thing in the world, because to them, it is. There’s no ceremony to it. You swim, and they’re there, going about their day with a level of indifference to you that’s honestly a little humbling. A decent guide will constantly remind you: look, don’t touch, don’t chase; let them come to you if they’re curious.

This is one of the videos:

Practical tips for Barbados

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3. Sal, Cape Verde — watching turtles nest

The trip that got this whole list started — the one that finally pushed me to write every turtle encounter down in one place instead of leaving them scattered across old posts and half-memories. Full story in Sal, Cape Verde: Sharks, Turtles & Turquoise Water — here’s the turtle side of it.

Sal has a reputation as a kitesurfing island with a salt lake and pretty catamaran trips, and it is all of that. What it doesn’t get enough credit for is being home to one of the most important loggerhead nesting sites on the planet — Cape Verde as a whole holds one of the world’s largest loggerhead populations, and Sal is the archipelago’s second-biggest nesting beach, after Boa Vista.

• Type of encounter: Nesting, guided, at night.

• When to go: July to October, with August the peak month. Chasing hatchlings instead of nesting mothers? Go in between September and November.

• What it’s actually like: you can’t just show up and wait on the sand — it’s illegal without a licensed guide during nesting season, and once you’ve seen how easily a torch or a whiff of perfume spooks a nesting female, you understand why.

My Personal Experience

Here’s the moment itself — filmed the night I’m about to tell you about.

I’ll be honest about how my experience went, because it wasn’t quite the scene I’d pictured — and it’s worth explaining where things went wrong.

I was picked up from the hotel in one of the small vehicles the operators use, as promised. Before we approached the beach, the vehicles were inspected, and each carried six to eight people — properly licensed, correctly sized groups, nothing wrong with any of that.

The problem started once we reached the beach. Several groups from different tours and operators had converged on the same stretch of sand.

Then we heard over the radio that another guide had found a nesting female. We all gathered around and took turns filing past to watch her lay her eggs. By then, there were well over fifty of us in total.

It was still genuinely moving. I still think about her patiently digging, over and over, as a hundred or so soft, leathery eggs dropped into the hole she’d made herself. But it wasn’t the calm encounter I’d imagined.

It got worse once she’d finished. As she made her way back to the sea, that same crowd closed in too closely around her, everyone angling for a photo or a closer look.

I remember feeling genuinely sorry for her. She’d just spent the best part of an hour digging, laying and covering her nest, was visibly exhausted, and now had fifty-odd people hounding her back to the water. That image has stayed with me more than anything else from the night — more than the eggs themselves.

Every individual group may have been doing everything right. What’s missing is anyone controlling how many separately legitimate groups end up around the same turtle at the same time.

The Bigger Picture

Cape Verde’s tourism is growing fast, and nesting turtles are increasingly part of the pitch — which is a good thing only if the numbers on the beach itself are actually managed, not just the numbers per vehicle. Licensing and vehicle inspections clearly already work; what doesn’t yet exist, at least from what I saw, is anything capping how many separately licensed groups can gather around the same nesting female at once. Don’t get me wrong, nobody there was trying to be careless, but fifty-plus people around one disoriented, exhausted turtle isn’t a low-impact wildlife encounter.

Project Biodiversity does excellent work protecting nests and eggs, but they can’t officially endorse specific operators — I emailed them directly, and with 30-plus agencies running these tours, they simply can’t vouch for every guide’s behaviour. Licences are also reissued by the government each year, under a law still being implemented, so this year’s licensed operators aren’t guaranteed to hold one next year. That’s exactly the gap I ran into: nobody is currently controlling how many separately licensed groups converge on the same turtle, and it isn’t something one tourist, or even one well-run operator, can fix alone. Left unaddressed as visitor numbers grow, this stops being a quiet, humbling thing to witness and turns into a parade — and the turtles pay for that.

Practical tips for Cape Verde

• Confirm the operator holds this year’s government licence (unlicensed guides aren’t allowed on the beach), and ask what’s in the pre-tour briefing — walking without light, dark clothing, no drinking or smoking, no flash photography. Neither guarantees your group won’t merge with others at the beach, so ask about that too.
• No flash photography during the laying process, and always ask before you assume it’s allowed.
• Some hatcheries run early-morning hatchling releases, where volunteers walk baby turtles down to the water. Worth asking about if you’re around outside nesting hours.
• Dress in dark colours and warmer than you’d expect. Nights on the beach get properly cool, and you’ll likely be sitting still for a couple of hours.

Places I haven’t been lucky

Snorkelling doesn’t guarantee a sighting, even in places where turtles are known to live — I’ve been in the water in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Thailand without seeing a single one. If you’re planning a trip specifically to swim with turtles, somewhere with a resident population in a shallow bay (like Barbados or Akumal) is a much safer bet than general reef snorkelling, where it really is down to luck.

Other Famous Places to See Turtles (on my list)

Sal, Barbados, and the Great Barrier Reef are just where I’ve happened to go — not remotely the full list of places worth it.

Here are other well-known nesting and swimming spots that keep coming up, several of which are firmly on my radar for future trips. I’ll promote each one to a full entry above, with real, practical detail, once I’ve actually been there.

For watching turtles nest

• Tortuguero, Costa Rica — Caribbean coast, famous for huge numbers of nesting green turtles (peak July–September), with occasional leatherbacks and hawksbills too.
• Ostional, Costa Rica — one of only a handful of places on Earth where you can witness an arribada: tens of thousands of olive ridleys nesting on the same beach over a few nights.
• Ras Al Hadd / Ras Al Jinz, Oman — one of the Indian Ocean’s most important green turtle nesting sites, with a well-run visitor reserve.
• Raine Island and Mon Repos, Australia — Raine Island hosts the largest green turtle nesting aggregation on the planet; Mon Repos, near Bundaberg, is one of the more accessible loggerhead sites for visitors.

For swimming with turtles

• Akumal, Mexico — calm, shallow bay on the Riviera Maya, reliable green turtle sightings straight from the beach.
• Maui, Hawaii — a handful of spots nicknamed “Turtle Town,” where green turtles (honu, locally) gather to feed and rest.
• The Seychelles and the Maldives — hawksbills and greens are a common sight around house reefs, sometimes without a boat at all.

Been somewhere that’s not on this list? Tell me — I’m always adding to my list of where I want to go next.

Responsible Wildlife Tourism and Conservation

Sea turtles are endangered — six of the seven species sit somewhere between vulnerable and critically endangered — and tourism is right in the middle of whether it improves or worsens the situation. Done badly, it stresses nesting females, disorients hatchlings, and damages the reefs and seagrass they depend on. Done well, it’s genuinely one of the reasons some nesting beaches are still protected at all: tour fees fund rangers, hatcheries, and research that many governments simply can’t afford on their own, and they give local communities a real financial incentive to protect turtles rather than harvest them.

How to actually choose an operator

Whether it’s a nesting tour or a swimming trip, the same question matters: how many people will end up in the same place at the same time? A licence only guarantees one part. My Sal and Barbados trips above are good examples of how differently that can play out even when every operator involved is doing things correctly on paper.

Ask directly: how many people will be around the turtle at the same time, and does that number include other companies’ groups meeting at the same spot? A good operator has a straight answer. A vague one usually means they don’t control it either.

Beyond that, look for licensing from the relevant park or wildlife authority (a legal requirement in most nesting areas, not a nice-to-have), and transparency about where the money goes — the best operators partner openly with a named conservation NGO. If anyone promises guaranteed sightings or the chance to touch or ride a turtle, that’s not a perk, it’s a red flag.

Etiquette that applies pretty much everywhere

• Keep your distance — a few metres minimum, more if the turtle seems remotely bothered by you.
• No flash near nesting or hatching turtles, and don’t assume photography is fine at all until a guide confirms it.
• Don’t touch, ride, chase, or try to redirect a turtle, in water or on sand, however good it’d look on camera.
• Keep noise to a minimum and use red-filtered light (or none) on nesting beaches.
• Take your rubbish with you, and use reef-safe sunscreen — the regular stuff can damage the coral and seagrass turtles actually eat.

Beyond the trip itself

You can adopt or donate to a nest through organisations like Project Biodiversity in Cape Verde, the Barbados Sea Turtle Project, or the Sea Turtle Conservancy elsewhere.

Report any stranded or injured turtle to local wildlife authorities rather than handling it yourself, and keep an eye on your own plastic use generally, since floating debris — plastic bags especially, which look uncannily like jellyfish underwater — remains one of the biggest global threats these animals face.

More places, coming soon

I’ll keep adding to this every time I have a new encounter worth writing up. If you’ve got a recommendation for somewhere I should go next, please let me know.

Read the full trip reports:

• 10 Days in Barbados: A Dream Holiday
• Sal, Cape Verde: Sharks, Turtles & Turquoise Water.

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