08/28/2026
Turtle Nesting in VA
Edited from an article by
NOAA-By Kendall Osborne
For the first time reported, a leatherback sea turtle has nested in coastal Virginia. Leatherback turtles are the largest turtles in the world, in some cases growing beyond eight feet in length.
One Sunday last July, a volunteer discovered large tracks on the sand at Dam Neck in Virginia Beach. The tracks were large and wide, and looked more like truck or ATV tracks than turtle tracks. Leatherbacks disturb a lot of the beach when they come ashore to nest. This “crawl” all over the sand makes it more difficult for predators to locate the eggs. “The tracks were 2.5 meters wide, which is much bigger than the tracks of a smaller and more common loggerhead.
It took the volunteers two and a half hours to finally find eggs. “The size of the eggs also points to a leatherback,” The eggs we found were the size of pool balls, which is the size of leatherback eggs.” On the following Monday, the Aquarium received a call from an angler who had been on the beach Saturday night. The angler provided photographic proof that a leatherback had indeed nested in Virginia. The nest has been protected, and will be watched by volunteers. As the time for hatching approaches, the nest will be monitored both day and night.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), leatherbacks have been around since the days of the dinosaurs, and have the widest distribution of any reptile in the world. They can hold their breath for 85 minutes, and can cover 10,000 ocean miles to feed and find a nesting site. They are considered endangered, and their population has declined by 40 percent over the last 3 generations. The biggest threats to their survival are poaching of eggs and turtles themselves, and entanglement in fishing gear.
See a sea turtle call Stranding Response at 757.385.7575 The organization has aided 78 turtles in 2026.
