Guerrero Coast · Pacific Mexico

Sea Turtles
at La Saladita.

Olive Ridley nesting Jul–Dec (peak Sep–Nov). Three other species in the nearshore corridor: East Pacific Green, Leatherback, Hawksbill. All four protected under NOM-059-SEMARNAT and CITES Appendix I.

The coast and its turtles

A nesting coast, not just a surf coast.

Olive Ridley is the primary nester here. Season Jul–Dec, peak Sep–Nov. Individual females come ashore at night; Saladita is not an arribada beach (mass-nesting at Ixtapilla and Escobilla), but individual nesting occurs on quiet Guerrero coast stretches and foraging turtles are seen year-round in the lineup.

East Pacific Green (*Chelonia mydas agassizii*, locally "black turtle"), Leatherback, and Hawksbill round out the corridor. All four protected under NOM-059-SEMARNAT and CITES Appendix I. Conservation: seasonal campamentos tortugueros patrol beaches, relocate eggs to hatcheries, release hatchlings. Contact CONANP Guerrero for current camp status.

Seasonal presence

Nesting calendar — monthly intensity by species.

Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Olive Ridley (nesting — literature)
East Pacific Green (year-round foraging)
Leatherback (rare, occasional)
Hawksbill (very rare)

Olive Ridley nesting season (shaded Jul–Dec, peak Sep–Nov) is sourced from literature for the Guerrero coast. Bars for Green, Leatherback, and Hawksbill reflect documented at-sea presence in this region — not a confirmed nesting calendar at this specific beach. GBIF occurrence counts for these three species in the Saladita 100 km study area are sparse; treat as presence indicators, not density or nesting estimates.

Common at Saladita

What you're likely to see

  • Lepidochelys olivaceaCommon · Year-round
  • Chelonia mydasCommon · Year-round

Frequency from 25-year GBIF records (2000–2025). Turtle observations include both at-sea encounters and beach sightings — classification reflects regional encounter likelihood, not nesting frequency at this specific beach.

Rare + Notable

If you see one, it matters

  • Dermochelys coriacea — Leatherback IUCN: Critically Endangered (Pacific subpopulation)  ·  5 records in 25 years The Pacific Leatherback population has declined >90%. Any sighting here is regionally significant — log it to iNaturalist immediately.
Species profiles

Four species, four different stories.

Olive Ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) on Oaxaca beach
Photo: Claudio Giovenzana via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Olive Ridley

Lepidochelys olivacea VU ↓ Common · Year-round Last reported: —

The most common sea turtle on the Mexico Pacific coast and the primary nesting species on the Guerrero coast. Small relative to other sea turtles — carapace typically 60–70 cm — with the distinctive olive-grey shell that gives the species its name.

Nesting season runs July through December, with the peak in September, October, and November. Females come ashore at night, typically spending 45–60 minutes excavating a nest and laying approximately 100 eggs.

Seasonal presence: Nesting season Jul–Dec (peak Sep–Nov). At-sea foraging year-round.
At Saladita: Nesting possible on quieter stretches; individual turtles seen in the lineup.
East Pacific Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) returning to sea
Photo: Brocken Inaglory via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

East Pacific Green (Black Turtle)
locally called “black turtle” for its dark shell

Chelonia mydas agassizii EN ↑ Common · Mar–Apr peak Last reported: —

The East Pacific subspecies has a darker, almost black carapace. Larger than the Olive Ridley (carapace 80–100 cm), primarily herbivorous, feeding on seagrasses and algae. Year-round presence in Guerrero coastal waters is documented; at-sea sightings near Saladita are occasional.

Seasonal presence: Year-round at sea; nesting season not well-documented for this locality.
Data sparse in study area — see methodology
Leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) specimen showing leathery carapace
Photo: Moheen Reeyad via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Leatherback

Dermochelys coriacea VU ↓ (Pacific CR) Uncommon — Notable rarity Last reported: 2021 (via climatology)

The largest living reptile — carapace 150–180 cm, weight exceeding 500 kg. The only sea turtle without a hard shell. Feeds almost exclusively on jellyfish. The Pacific population has declined over 90% in recent decades; at-sea encounters near Saladita are rare.

Seasonal presence: Rare in the area; at-sea sightings occasional.
Very rare in study area — data sparse
Hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) showing distinctive pointed beak
Photo: Diego Delso via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Hawksbill

Eretmochelys imbricata CR ↓ Uncommon — 10 records / 25 years Last reported: —

Named for the narrow, pointed beak. Associated with coral reef habitats, feeding primarily on sponges. Very rare along the Guerrero coast; confirmed sightings near Saladita are exceptional. No nesting documentation for this area.

Seasonal presence: Very rare. No documented seasonal pattern for this locality.
Extremely rare in study area — presence incidental
Live data

Recent sightings — last 90 days.

Loading from GBIF…

Sightings pulled live from the GBIF Occurrence API for a 100 km radius around La Saladita (bounding box lat 16.7–18.5, lon -102.4 to -100.4), last 90 days. Records include museum specimens, researcher observations, and citizen-science contributions (iNaturalist). They do not exclusively represent Saladita-beach sightings. Low counts are expected — this area is not a high-effort observation zone.

Climate & reproduction

A warming sand.

Sex is determined by sand temperature during the middle third of incubation — not genetics.

For sea turtles, the nest is the thermostat. During a temperature-sensitive window roughly 20–40 days into incubation, ambient sand temperature — not chromosomes — determines whether a hatchling emerges female or male. Above the pivotal temperature, more females develop; below it, more males. For most sea turtle species the pivotal threshold sits near 29.5 °C (Wibbels 2003). Olive Ridley runs warmer: estimates for Pacific Mexico populations place the pivotal temperature around 30.5–31 °C, meaning Olive Ridley nests are already operating close to a female-biased regime during a Guerrero summer.

Mass-nesting (arribada) beaches amplify the risk. When thousands of females converge on a single stretch — as at Escobilla and Morro Ayuta, 350 km southeast of Saladita on the Oaxacan coast — nests concentrate thermally as well as spatially. A uniform sand-temperature shift pushes the entire cohort in one direction. Modeling published in Hawkes et al. (2009) and Patrício et al. (2021) projects female-biased sex ratios exceeding 90% at many Pacific nesting beaches under mid-century warming scenarios; sustained female-only cohorts eventually reduce reproductive output as adult males become scarce.

The regional physical signal is documented. Our ERA5 surface-temperature analysis finds a warming trend of +0.12 °C / decade for this stretch of Mexican Pacific coast (1979–2025, p = 0.001). Surface air temperature tracks sand temperature directionally across seasons; SST in the eastern Pacific has also trended upward over the same period. The mechanism connecting regional warming to nest incubation temperatures is well-established in the TSD literature.

Honest framing: no sand-temperature measurements exist for Saladita specifically in this dataset. The TSD science cited here applies to Olive Ridley populations on the Mexican Pacific coast broadly, and to the Oaxacan arribada beaches in particular. Saladita sits in the same physical and biogeographic regime. The regional warming trend is our own ERA5 analysis; the TSD thresholds and sex-ratio projections are drawn from peer-reviewed literature cited below.

Sources

  1. Wibbels, T. (2003). Critical approaches to sex determination in sea turtles. In Lutz, P.L., Musick, J.A., & Wyneken, J. (Eds.), The Biology of Sea Turtles, Vol. II. CRC Press. [General reference — DOI not independently verified]
  2. Hawkes, L.A., Broderick, A.C., Godfrey, M.H., & Godley, B.J. (2009). Climate change and marine turtles. Endangered Species Research, 7, 137–154. doi:10.3354/esr00178
  3. Patrício, A.R., Varela, M.R., Barbosa, C., Broderick, A.C., et al. (2021). Climate change undermines the global functioning of marine turtle sex determination. Royal Society Open Science, 8, 210127. doi:10.1098/rsos.210127
  4. Standora, E.A., & Spotila, J.R. (1985). Temperature-dependent sex determination in sea turtles. Copeia, 1985(3), 711–722. [General reference — DOI not independently verified]
  5. Lasó, G., et al. (general reference): Mexican Pacific Olive Ridley sand temperature and sex-ratio studies. IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group technical literature. [Specific Sandoval-Espinoza et al. authorship unverified — cited as general reference for regional pivotal-temperature range]
Observed in the wild

Recent sightings — iNaturalist photos.

Photos logged by naturalists and surfers within 50 km of La Saladita, sourced directly from iNaturalist. Each card links back to the original observation. License code shown per photo — images without a confirmed open license are linked, not embedded.

Regional context

Saladita in the context of the Mexican Pacific.

The beach at Saladita sits inside one of the most significant sea-turtle nesting regions on earth. The Mexican Pacific coast hosts three of the world’s only confirmed Olive Ridley arribada beaches — mass synchronised nestings numbering in the hundreds of thousands of females in a single event — and the Guerrero coast, where Saladita lies, is documented individual-nesting habitat for the same species.

The Guerrero coast is not an arribada beach in the way Escobilla or Morro Ayuta are. Those beaches, roughly 600 km southeast in Oaxaca, record over a million turtle arrivals per season. What happens here is quieter: individual females nesting on the stretch of dark-sand coast between Petatlán and Zihuatanejo, tracked by a network of local campamentos tortugueros that have operated continuously since before Saladita was on any surf map.

The recovery story is remarkable. Mexico banned commercial hunting of sea turtles in 1990. Olive Ridley populations that had been harvested to a fraction of their historic numbers began returning. At Escobilla, nesting arrivals climbed from approximately 50,000 in 1988 to over 700,000 by 1994 and more than a million by 2000. The 2017–2018 season saw an estimated 4.6 million Olive Ridley arrivals across Escobilla and Morro Ayuta combined — the kind of wildlife event with almost no parallel on the planet. Ixtapilla, in Michoacán about 190 km up the coast from Saladita, began receiving its own arribadas in the late 1990s and now hosts an estimated 400,000 nests per season.

The Guerrero Leatherback nesting is separately significant. The four beaches most critical to Pacific Mexico Leatherback nesting — Mexiquillo (Michoacán), Tierra Colorada (Guerrero), Cahuitán and Barra de la Cruz (Oaxaca) — collectively account for 45% of Mexico’s annual Leatherback nesting. Tierra Colorada is the Guerrero anchor of that system, a federal sanctuary and Ramsar site about 330 km southeast of Saladita. The Pacific Leatherback population is Critically Endangered; every nest counts.

At the scale of the Saladita lineup, the relevant programme is CONANP’s campamentos tortugueros network — seasonal field camps that patrol nesting beaches, collect and relocate eggs to on-site hatcheries, and release hatchlings. CONANP oversees 40 turtle conservation centers nationally and monitors 33 Olive Ridley nesting beaches under its PACE programme. In the Petatlán–Zihuatanejo corridor, the best-documented camp is Campamento Tortuguero Ayotlcalli, founded in 2011 on Playa Blanca (roughly 30 km northwest of Saladita, near the Zihuatanejo airport), which works all three species present in the corridor: Olive Ridley, Black/Green, and Leatherback.

As of 2026, the Guerrero state congress has formally urged municipalities to increase funding to campamento operations — an indicator that the network is active but resource-constrained. If you spend time on the Guerrero coast during nesting season (July–December), you are not a spectator to a remote natural event. You are adjacent to one.

Ocean-scale migration

Pacific connectivity: where these turtles go.

The black turtle foraging off Saladita is part of a migratory network that links Mexico to Hawaii, the Galapagos, and Baja California.

Eastern Pacific green turtles (Chelonia mydas agassizii) connect Guerrero nesting beaches with foraging grounds across a vast Pacific arc. Satellite telemetry from NOAA and Mexican research programs documents movements of several thousand kilometres — Guerrero-coast individuals have been tracked to feeding aggregations off Baja California, in the Gulf of California, and to the Galapagos Archipelago. The Galapagos–Mexico corridor is one of the longest documented green turtle migrations in the Pacific basin. Hawaiian green turtle populations share the same species and show comparable long-distance fidelity between nesting and foraging sites.

The Sea Turtle Conservancy (STC) runs the oldest continuous green turtle satellite tracking program, based at Tortuguero, Costa Rica. Those animals are Atlantic/Caribbean Chelonia mydas — taxonomically related, ecologically parallel, but an entirely separate ocean-basin population. STC’s public satellite tracks do not extend west of roughly −84°W; none reach the Eastern Pacific. The Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network (WIDECAST) coordinates recovery planning for 40+ Caribbean nations and publishes Sea Turtle Recovery Action Plans (STRAPs); its mandate is Caribbean-only and no Mexico Pacific STRAP exists in its library. Both organisations are cited here as Atlantic-basin reference points. Eastern Pacific green turtle research is led by Mexican institutions under SEMARNAT/CONANP and by NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center.

Selected peer-reviewed references — Eastern Pacific connectivity

  1. Seminoff, J.A. et al. (2008). Ecology of East Pacific green turtles at a regional foraging area. Endangered Species Research 5(2–3), 147–158.
  2. Wallace, B.P. et al. (2010). Global patterns of marine turtle bycatch. Conservation Letters 3(3), 131–142.
  3. Dutton, P.H. et al. (2014). Genetic stock composition of leatherback turtles nesting in the Pacific. Chelonian Conservation and Biology 13(1), 60–69.
  4. Gaos, A.R. et al. (2017). Hawksbill turtle foraging habitat shifts follow prey availability. Royal Society Open Science 4:170721.
  5. Sea Turtle Conservancy. Sea Turtle Tracking. conserveturtles.org/project/sea-turtle-tracking/
  6. WIDECAST. National Recovery Plans. widecast.org

STC and WIDECAST are Atlantic/Caribbean organisations included here for taxonomic and conservation context. Their tracking data does not cover Eastern Pacific populations. Data artifact: functions/api/_turtle_stc_widecast.js — built by scripts/build_turtle_stc_widecast.py.

Threats & enforcement

Bycatch, mortality, and protection.

Fishing pressure and episodic mortality events are the documented near-term threats on this coast. Egg poaching — historically the primary threat — has been substantially reduced by the campamento network and PROFEPA enforcement, but continues.

Hawaii longline fleet. The U.S.-based Hawaii pelagic longline fishery operates across the central North Pacific, in waters used by Eastern Pacific Olive Ridley during post-nesting migrations. Before the fishery was closed in 2001 (court order), observer data estimated roughly 666 sea turtles caught per year, including approximately 146 Olive Ridley annually (1994–2000 mean). The fishery reopened in 2004 with required mitigation: circle hooks, mackerel-type bait, and 100% observer coverage on shallow-set trips. This reduced loggerhead interactions by about 90% and leatherback interactions by about 83% compared to the pre-closure baseline. From 2017 to 2021, NOAA Fisheries reported the combined shallow-set and deep-set fleet took 39 to 70 sea turtles per year across all species combined. Per-year, per-species breakdowns are published in NOAA PIRO PDF annual status reports; olive ridley year-specific counts are not available via public machine-readable API.

Mexican Pacific small-scale fisheries. Based on port surveys of 1,357 fishers across 99 communities and 11 states (ESR 2025), Olive Ridley followed by East Pacific Green are the most commonly reported bycatch species in Pacific Mexican small-scale fisheries, primarily in gillnets. Mexico’s artisanal Pacific fleet totals roughly 56,000 vessels. There is no mandatory observer program providing centralized annual counts equivalent to the U.S. Hawaii longline program; national statistics are not published in machine-readable form.

Guerrero mortality event — 2019. PROFEPA investigated an environmental contingency after 101 sea turtles were found dead across six Guerrero municipalities: 14 Olive Ridley (golfina), 86 East Pacific Green (prieta), and 1 Hawksbill (carey). Inspectors found no fishing gear marks. The leading hypothesis was a harmful algal bloom (red tide / paralytic shellfish poisoning). PROFEPA operates a permanent surveillance program during nesting season in Guerrero, Michoácan, and Oaxaca. In 2023–2024, coverage extended to 70 nesting beaches in 12 coastal states, with 23 turtle camp inspections and 12 federal-waters patrol operations in 2024.

Egg poaching and TED compliance. Substantially reduced since the 1990 commercial hunting ban and expansion of the campamento tortuguero network. Mexico requires Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) on shrimp trawlers; PROFEPA completed TED certification for 100% of private requests in 2024. Per-year seizure and prosecution statistics are in annual PDF reports at gob.mx/profepa and are not available via API.

All figures are sourced from NOAA Fisheries, PROFEPA press releases, and peer-reviewed literature. Per-year olive ridley counts for the Hawaii longline fleet are in NOAA PIRO PDF annual reports and are not reproduced here without confirmed figures. Data artifact: functions/api/_turtle_bycatch_threats.js.

Sources

  1. NOAA Fisheries PIRO. Sea turtle bycatch — Hawaii longline fishery. fisheries.noaa.gov
  2. NOAA Fisheries PIRO. Pacific Islands Longline Quarterly and Annual Status Reports (PDFs). fisheries.noaa.gov
  3. SFP Bycatch Hub. Best practice adoption drastically reduced sea turtle bycatch. bycatchsolutions.org — fleet-wide figure: 39–70 turtles/yr 2017–2021.
  4. PROFEPA. Contingencia por mortandad de tortugas marinas en playas de Guerrero (2019). gob.mx/profepa
  5. PROFEPA. Informe de Actividades 2024. gob.mx/profepa
  6. Fisher-based assessments of sea turtle bycatch in small-scale fisheries in Pacific Mexico. Ecology and Society Resources, 2025. int-res.com/esr
  7. Federal Register 2020-20304. Sea Turtle Limits in the Hawaii Shallow-Set Longline Fishery. federalregister.gov
Ocean Biodiversity Information System

OBIS occurrence records — Guerrero corridor.

The Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) aggregates marine species occurrences from research institutions, survey cruises, and satellite telemetry programs worldwide. The following counts cover a bounding box of lat 15.5–19.5°N / lon 103–100°W — a roughly 330 × 440 km rectangle centered on the Guerrero coast, queried via the OBIS REST API v3 (June 2026). Records are filtered to 500 per species. basisOfRecord distinguishes observation type: HumanObservation = researcher or observer sighting; MachineObservation = satellite-tag or acoustic telemetry track.

Olive Ridley — Lepidochelys olivacea

223 records. All are HumanObservation — no satellite-tagged Olive Ridley tracks fall within this bounding box in the OBIS archive. The majority come from NOAA SWFSC Marine Mammal Survey cruises (PODS 1992, STAR 1998–2006), which systematically documented sea turtle by-catch encounters across the Eastern Tropical Pacific; additional records are from Grupo Tortuguero and Turtle-Safe Seas datasets. Closest documented occurrence to La Saladita: 20.0 km. Mean distance: 163.2 km.

Datasets: SWFSC Marine Mammal Survey (PODS 1992, STAR 1998–2006), Pacific Turtle Tracks: Grupo Tortuguero, Pacific turtle tracks: Turtle-Safe Seas Project, and others.

East Pacific Green — Chelonia mydas

139 records, all satellite telemetry (MachineObservation). Every East Pacific Green record in this bbox is a PTT-tag track point — zero incidental observer sightings. This reflects the nature of Pacific Mexico green turtle research: almost all data comes from dedicated tagging programs rather than survey cruises. Closest documented occurrence to La Saladita: 3.7 km, confirming green turtle use of the nearshore Guerrero corridor. Mean distance: 100.0 km. Sources are the Grupo Tortuguero Pacific Turtle Tracks project and the Turtle-Safe Seas Project.

Datasets: Pacific Turtle Tracks: Grupo Tortuguero; Pacific turtle tracks: Turtle-Safe Seas Project.

Leatherback — Dermochelys coriacea

6 records — 3 satellite telemetry (MachineObservation) and 3 researcher sightings (HumanObservation). Leatherbacks are pelagic migrants; their infrequent presence in this inshore bounding box is consistent with occasional corridor transit rather than residency. Closest record to La Saladita: 43.2 km. Sources include SWFSC STAR cruises and a Gulf of California tagging dataset.

Datasets: SWFSC Marine Mammal Survey (STAR 2000, 2003, 2006); Tortugas Marinas del Golfo de California.

Hawksbill — Eretmochelys imbricata

0 records in this bbox. No OBIS-aggregated occurrence — whether observer sighting, specimen, or satellite track — falls within the Guerrero corridor query. Hawksbills are genuinely rare on Pacific Mexico open-coast beaches; their documented Pacific Mexico range is more strongly associated with rocky reefs and the Gulf of California. Zero OBIS records does not mean absence, but the data cannot document presence.

How to read basisOfRecord: HumanObservation records are researcher or at-sea observer encounters. MachineObservation records are satellite PTT-tag or acoustic telemetry track points — animal position fixes, not sightings. Museum specimens (PreservedSpecimen) and material samples do not appear in this dataset. OBIS total for this bbox across all 4 species: 368 records. Script: scripts/build_turtle_obis.py → functions/api/_turtle_obis.js. Generated 2026-06-09.
Federal research infrastructure

CMT Mazunte + the Guerrero camp network.

Mexico maintains the world's most extensive federal sea-turtle research infrastructure. The Centro Mexicano de la Tortuga in Mazunte, Oaxaca is its hub — sitting just 52 km west of La Escobilla, the planet's largest Olive Ridley mass-nesting beach.

The Centro Mexicano de la Tortuga (CMT) was established in September 1991 by presidential decree under the name Museo Vivo de la Tortuga Marina, and transferred to CONANP (Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas) in 2005. Located on the coast at Mazunte, San Pedro Pochutla municipality in Oaxaca — roughly 610 km southeast of La Saladita — CMT operates as Mexico's central marine turtle research and conservation facility. Its stated mission is to disseminate knowledge of turtle biology, conservation law, and protection, while supporting scientific research, ecological tourism, and community development.

CMT directly manages three affiliated Marine Turtle Protection and Conservation Centers on the Oaxacan coast: La Escobilla (Olive Ridley, world's largest arribada), Morro Ayuta (second-largest Mexican Olive Ridley mass-nesting site), and Barra de la Cruz (Olive Ridley and Leatherback). Together these three beaches account for well over one million Olive Ridley nests in peak seasons and a significant fraction of Mexico's Pacific Leatherback nesting. CMT maintains live exhibits of all four marine turtle species that occur on the Pacific coast, plus freshwater and terrestrial species, and is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday.

The Petatlán–Zihuatanejo corridor

The Guerrero coast running from Petatlán municipality northwest to Zihuatanejo (the 30–40 km stretch that includes La Saladita) sits within a documented Olive Ridley nesting corridor. No mass-nesting (arribada) beach exists here, but solitary Olive Ridley nesting is documented across Guerrero in the literature. A pre-2010 CONANP survey identified 40+ campamentos tortugueros along the full Guerrero coast. Earlier versions of this page stated that no named campamento in the Petatlán sub-corridor was publicly documented — that was a research gap, not a real absence. Two named camps exist and are documented below.

The publicly documented camps in the Guerrero coast network are:

Local camps near Saladita

Two community-run camps operate within 30 km of Saladita. Neither is a CONANP federal camp; both are independent, self-funded, and run by local communities. They are the camps most likely to be active during your time here.

Campamento Tortuguero Playa Petatillo sits on Playa Petatillo, a beach community roughly 10 km between Saladita and Troncones along the coastal road. Founded in 2004 by a group of local fishermen, this is one of the older community camps in the sub-corridor. The founding group explicitly built it without government support — running on their own resources and donations. Olive Ridley (golfina) is the primary species worked; the broader corridor also supports East Pacific Green (prieta) and Leatherback (laúd), though species coverage specific to Petatillo is unconfirmed in public records. The camp was documented by the Querétaro-based NGO Ayotzintli A.C., which runs volunteer programs at community camps across Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Veracruz. No current public-facing contact has been found for the camp itself as of 2026; the most recent online documentation dates to the Ayotzintli blog, 2010–2011. If you are heading to Petatillo during nesting season (July–December), ask locally.

Campamento Tortuguero ECOT is located on Playa Troncones, roughly 30 km northwest of Saladita. It is the best-documented active camp in the immediate corridor, with reviews through 2026 and a public Facebook page (facebook.com/ecottroncones). Three species are confirmed: Olive Ridley, East Pacific Green, and Leatherback. Releases happen daily during season, with the main afternoon release session at 4:30 pm and a morning session at 7:30 am — check their Facebook page for current meeting location and nest-count statistics, which are camp-reported. Visitor participation is welcome on a voluntary donation basis. Phone: 755-124-9279. Season: July–October for best activity; daily releases when hatchlings are ready.

Research note: No CONANP affiliation has been confirmed for either camp. Petatillo was established as explicitly independent. ECOT’s government relationship is not documented in public sources. Both camps operate without formal API or published nest-count data. Coordinates for Playa Petatillo are not yet in this dataset. Data artifact: functions/api/_local_turtle_camps.js — built by scripts/build_local_turtle_camps.py, June 2026.

Tag recovery near Saladita. CMT historically participates in Mexico's national marine turtle tagging program (Programa de Marcado de Tortugas Marinas), but the tag-recovery database is not a public API. No documented flipper-tag recoveries from the Petatlán–Zihuatanejo corridor appear in publicly searchable sources. OBIS satellite telemetry records do place East Pacific Green turtle tracks within 3.7 km of Saladita (Grupo Tortuguero PTT program, MachineObservation records) — confirming the corridor is actively used by foraging green turtles, though this is GPS satellite tracking, not CMT tag-recovery data.

Data artifact: functions/api/_cmt_conanp_deeper.js — built by scripts/build_cmt_conanp_deeper.py. CONANP CMT page fetched June 2026. Camp-level nest counts are PDF-only in CONANP PACE annual reports; no public API. See also: conservation overview.

Sources

  1. CONANP. Centro Mexicano de la Tortuga. gob.mx/conanp
  2. CONANP ANP Registry — Santuario Tortuguero Tierra Colorada. descubreanp.conanp.gob.mx
  3. Ayotlcalli Campamento Tortuguero. ayotlcalli.org
  4. SWOT Grantees 2022. seaturtlestatus.org
  5. PROFEPA press release — leatherback nesting beach distribution. gob.mx/profepa
  6. CONANP PACE Tortuga Golfina (Lepidochelys olivacea). gob.mx/conanp — full detail in PDF.
  7. Ayotzintli A.C. blog — Campamento tortuguero Playa Petatillo (founding 2004, fishermen-led). ayotzintli.blogspot.com, July 2010
  8. Noticias de Querétaro — Ayotzintli, en defensa de tortugas (director Pablo Antonio Trujillo). noticiasdequeretaro.com.mx, 2015
  9. ZonaTuristica — Campamento Tortuguero ECOT, Troncones (species, nest estimates, schedule, contact). zonaturistica.com
  10. ECOT Troncones — Facebook public page. facebook.com/ecottroncones
  11. Tripadvisor — ECOT, Troncones (2026 visitor reviews). tripadvisor.com
Methodology & sources

How this data is built.

Occurrence data

GBIF Occurrence Search API v1. Bounding box lat 16.7–18.5°N / lon -102.4–-100.4°W, 2000–2025, hasCoordinate=true. Script: scripts/build_turtle_climatology.py → functions/api/_turtle_climatology.js. Live sightings query GBIF at request time.

iNaturalist direct observations: scripts/build_turtle_inat_direct.py queries the iNaturalist API v1 within 50 km of La Saladita (radius query, all quality grades). Output: functions/api/_turtle_inat_direct.js, served via /api/turtle-inat-direct. Photos embedded only when a confirmed open license (CC-BY, CC-BY-NC, CC0, etc.) is present; records without a confirmed license link back to iNaturalist. iNat provides richer metadata than GBIF: photos, expert IDs, observer credit, and project tags.

OBIS occurrences: scripts/build_turtle_obis.py queries the Ocean Biodiversity Information System REST API v3 for four species within a lat 15.5–19.5°N / lon 103–100°W bounding box (up to 500 records per species, stdlib-only, 45 s timeout). Output: functions/api/_turtle_obis.js. OBIS aggregates telemetry programs (MachineObservation = PTT/GPS tags) alongside human observer records, providing a satellite-track layer absent from GBIF and iNat.

Data limitations

Sparse GBIF coverage reflects low observer effort, not low turtle abundance. <20 georeferenced records → data_sparse: true; treat monthly distribution as anecdotal. GBIF records do not distinguish nesting females from at-sea encounters. Olive Ridley nesting season (Jul–Dec, peak Sep–Nov) sourced from Guerrero coast literature, not inferred from GBIF.

Conservation status

IUCN Red List statuses are sourced from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. All four species are also listed under CITES Appendix I (prohibition on commercial international trade) and protected under Mexican Federal law (NOM-059-SEMARNAT).

Nesting season sources

Olive Ridley nesting season dates for the Guerrero coast are derived from published scientific literature on Pacific Mexico sea turtle nesting phenology. Saladita is not a documented mass-nesting (arribada) beach. Nesting seasons for Chelonia mydas, Dermochelys coriacea, and Eretmochelys imbricata are not documented for this specific locality; those species’ nesting_season fields are null in the data artifact.

Mexican government data (CONABIO / CONANP)

Regional context data compiled in scripts/build_mx_turtle_data.py → functions/api/_mx_turtle_government_data.js. CONABIO’s SNIB nesting-beaches dataset (“Las tortugas marinas y sus playas de anidación en México”, GBIF e522ac84 / DOI 10.15468/enc2xw) is machine-readable via the GBIF Occurrence API. The corridor query (lat 14.5–20.5, lon -105.5 to -95.5) returned 83 records. CONANP’s PACE annual nest-count reports are published as PDFs at gob.mx/conanp; per-camp counts are not available via API. The SNIB-2 SOAP web service is documented but returns XML, not JSON, and its availability is uncertain.

Arribada nest-count figures: Abreu-Grobois & Plotkin (2008) in Plotkin (ed.) Biology and Conservation of Ridley Sea Turtles (Johns Hopkins UP) — mean 1,013,034 females/yr 2001–2005 at Escobilla; CONANP press release (2018) — 4.6M combined Escobilla + Morro Ayuta 2017–18 season; CONANP press release (Nov 2024) — 291,088 arrivals at Morro Ayuta Aug–Nov 2024; NOAA/USFWS Olive Ridley 5-Year Review (2014) — Ixtapilla. Guerrero camp data: CONANP ANP registry, Ayotlcalli NGO site (ayotlcalli.org), SWOT Grantees 2022.