Planet Duplo is a lover of turtles, so today, we visited The Hatchery at Queensland Museum to watch baby loggerhead turtles hatch from their eggs. The Hatchery is a temporary exhibit as part of the World Science Festival Brisbane and forms part of a conservation program to boost the number of loggerhead turtles in the wild.

Over the last 30 years, the Queensland coastline has seen a reduction in loggerhead turtles by more than 80%. When in the wild, only a very small proportion of hatched baby turtles will survive long enough to reach the water, and of those that reach the water, many will die somewhere between the beach and the East Australian Current that will take them on their journey towards adulthood.

The Hatchery contains 70 loggerhead turtles eggs that have been collected from the Mon Repos region (around Bundaberg) and incubated. Once hatched, these turtles will be released off the coast into the current, hopefully increasing their chances of survival by avoiding the predators and other hazards that they normally need to overcome to even make it to the open ocean. (Who else thought of ‘Finding Nemo’ at the mention of the E.A.C. (East Australian Current), or of images of Dory and Hank at the mention of the ‘open ocean’?)

We did think that The Hatchery would be larger than what it was, and that there would have been more information displayed about turtle conservation in the area, however the exhibit did include a range of turtle skeletons and other artefacts. Not to mention that the baby turtles were extremely cute! The biggest surprise to us was how long it actually takes for a turtle to break free of its egg (all day!) and how exhausted it was after the hatching struggle. We were also able to handle the eggs once they were hatched. We had imagined the turtle eggs to be hard and brittle, like bird eggs, but instead, they were a flexible and slightly stretchy.

The exhibit was staffed by experienced volunteers from the Mon Repos Conservation Park (the volunteers we spoke to had been working with the Park for at least 16 years) and turtle-specialist marine biologists – all were highly knowledgeable, very approachable and very keen to discuss all aspects of turtle life (not just about loggerhead turtles).

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