The annual ‘turtle muster’ led by the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) saw a crew of scientists spend five days living aboard a ‘mothership’ out on the bay, catching, tagging, weighing and measuring several hundred turtles before releasing them back into the bay.

The team was joined by a group of Quandamooka children for a day, many of whom have been involved in past years’ musters.

DERM’s chief scientist, Dr Col Limpus, led the turtle catch and said there was a sense of continuity among many of the kids.

“They’re very enthusiastic and interested in what’s going on; some of the kids have been out there before and they remember things from previous years and remind us of things that happened last time,” Dr Limpus said.

“We catch the full range of turtles, everything from small turtles that have just arrived from the breeding grounds up north to live in the bay – they’d be about seven kilos and 40cm across their shell – to big adults where the heaviest one we had was just over 200 kilograms.”

The turtles live as juveniles in the bay until they reach breeding age at about 35 years, when they head north to the southern Great Barrier Reef area, although Dr Limpus said they caught one turtle that had been tagged as far away as New Caledonia, about 1700 kilometres away.

Darren Burns, of the Quandamooka Land Council, said the community greatly appreciated Dr Limpus welcoming the children onto the research program over the past few years.

“This is a valuable cross-cultural exercise for these saltwater children to gain an appreciation of the science side of the turtle welfare that Col does,” he said.

“They can take this back to their community and it stays with them for life.

“Col has been welcomed as a science mentor by the Quandamooka community as well as by the children involved in his turtle rodeo/musters.”

Dr Limpus said the bay’s green turtle population was still in recovery after protection laws were passed in the 1950s, with juveniles born in the 1970s and 80s only now breeding and beginning to boost the population.