LOC’s turtle teams make a ‘shell’ of a lot of progress in 2025

Along the beaches of Watamu, a ranger’s work often begins long before dawn. By torchlight, local patrol teams walk the shoreline listening out for a quiet, shuffling movement above the tide line: the slow, determined crawl of a female turtle hauling herself ashore to nest. By sunrise, the tracks may already be fading beneath the wind and waves, but the information captured under the moonlight becomes part of something much larger – a conservation effort that has been quietly shaping the future of Kenya’s sea turtles for almost three decades. 

Local Ocean Conservation (LOC) hatched in 1997 when a small group of Watamu residents decided they could no longer ignore the mounting pressures on their coastline and its wildlife. Beachfront development was expanding, turtle nests were increasingly vulnerable to poaching, and the accidental capture of turtles in fishing nets was becoming a serious threat offshore. What started as a handful of concerned local people patrolling beaches at night was formalised into the Watamu Turtle Watch, which has since grown into one of East Africa’s most respected marine conservation organisations, LOC. 

Today, the project operates across the Watamu National Marine Park and Malindi-Watamu Marine Reserve Area through four connected strands of work: nest and beach monitoring; by-catch rescue; turtle rehabilitation; and anti-poaching operations. Together, they form a constant presence along the coastline, protecting turtles at every stage of their lives while also building a detailed understanding of the pressures these animals face. 

What makes the programme particularly striking is how enmeshed it is in the local community. Many of the patrol teams and conservation staff are from the surrounding area and, over the years, the project has worked hard to ensure marine conservation is not seen as something imposed from outside, but something owned and shaped locally. That sense of shared responsibility runs through every part of the work, from school visits and awareness events at hotels, to beach clean-ups involving residents, tourists, and fishermen alike. 

Since 1997, more than 24,000 turtles have been rescued from by-catch through the programme. Nesting activity within the area has also increased significantly during this time, helped by the long-term monitoring and protection of nesting beaches. These are not abstract conservation gains; these are thousands of individual turtles surviving encounters that would once almost certainly have been fatal. 

The data gathered through the Nest Monitoring Programme has become one of the most valuable long-term datasets of its kind in the region, allowing the team to monitor turtle populations and detect emerging changes in nesting behaviour to identify new priority areas for protection. 

The findings from the 2025 season suggest that, while nesting activity has remained relatively stable, there are new pressures developing along parts of the coastline that will require closer attention in the years ahead. Throughout 2025, the team recorded 62 nests, with green turtles accounting for the overwhelming majority. Green turtles also remained the species most encountered through the by-catch programme, making up around 71% of all recorded by-catch interactions. Critically Endangered hawksbill sea turtles accounted for most of the remaining encounters, while loggerhead and olive ridley turtles were seen only rarely. 

Across the season, the Bycatch & Rescue Programme recorded 888 by-catch interactions and 13 direct rescue interventions. Each time a turtle was untangled from fishing gear the team was able to assess the individual and document vital population data, before returning them to the sea wherever possible. It is demanding, repetitive work, often carried out in difficult conditions, but over time every encounter adds up to something substantial. The steady accumulation of small interventions becomes measurable conservation impact. 

Perhaps most importantly, 29 years since its founding, LOC continues to show that conservation works best when local communities are central to it. The beaches of Watamu are not protected by fences or isolation. They are protected by relationships: between conservationists and fishermen; between researchers and local families; and between rangers walking night patrols and the communities that support them. 

The success of the Watamu Turtle Watch programme has been built on years of persistence, local leadership, and countless nights spent walking the beaches in the dark so that sea turtles can still have a future in these waters.