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Newborn turtle crawls out of the sand hole, covered in sand, on Príncipe Island.

Turtle Season in Príncipe: Nights of Quiet Magic and Powerful Conservation

Turtle season on Príncipe unfolds from November to April, in two deeply atmospheric phases: nesting, then hatching.

When the sun sets over Príncipe and the last colours drain from the sky, another rhythm begins along the island's wild shores. Under the cover of darkness, female sea turtles return to the very beaches where they once hatched, guided by instincts older than memory.

Turtle season on Príncipe is not a show that can be scheduled. It is a quiet, humbling encounter with nature on its own terms – and an invitation to be part of a conservation story that is transforming both the island's ecosystems and its communities.

A Sanctuary for Five Species

GOOD TO KNOW: Five of the world’s seven sea turtle species occur in São Tomé and Príncipe – three nest regularly on Príncipe.

Of the seven species of sea turtles in the world, five can be found in the waters around São Tomé and Príncipe. On Príncipe, three of them regularly nest on the island's beaches:

  • Green turtle (Chelonia mydas) – known locally as Mão Branca or Verde, the most common nester and the main species guests are likely to see.
  • Hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) – Sada or de Pente, a beautifully patterned species that also comes ashore to nest.
  • Leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) – Ambulância or de Couro, the largest of all sea turtles and the rarest visitor to Príncipe's nesting beaches. Adults can reach up to 2.7 metres in length and weigh as much as 500 kilograms.
  • Olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea) – Tatô, has been recorded nesting only a handful of times, and
  • Loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) are occasionally seen in the surrounding waters but do not nest on the island's beaches.

These ancient mariners are more than a beautiful sight. Sea turtles are keystone species – their presence signals a healthy ecosystem. By grazing, feeding and moving between habitats, they help keep seagrass beds, coral reefs and beaches in balance. When turtles disappear, entire natural processes begin to unravel.

As Jormicilesa Dias, Junior Project Manager and Environmental Educator at Fundação Príncipe (our local non-profit partner organisation), explains:

"As a biologist, I am passionate about life and animals. Working to protect sea turtles has only deepened that passion. For the past five years at Fundação Príncipe, within the ProTetuga project, I've dedicated myself to protecting and conserving these species, and to raising awareness about how important turtles are for the people of Príncipe and for the balance of our ecosystem."

Newly hatched baby turtles heading to the ocean on Príncipe Island

When to Come: Nesting and Hatching

On Príncipe, turtle season unfolds in two main chapters:

Nesting – November to February

KEY FACT: Nesting happens at night, mostly on remote beaches such as Praia Grande.

During the night, females emerge from the ocean to dig their nests and lay their eggs. If you are lucky on a visit to Praia Grande, you may witness a mother turtle slowly hauling herself up the beach, choosing her spot and beginning to nest. If you are even luckier, you may witness many sea turtles nesting under moonlight.

Hatching – February to April

GOOD TO KNOW: Hatching often happens in the evening or early morning – ideal for families.

After an incubation period of roughly two months, young turtles hatch in the sand and instinctively start digging their way up. Hatching often happens in the evening or in the early morning, making it a particularly wonderful experience for families with children.

Because this is a natural process, there are no guarantees of what you will see on any given visit. Some days bring the unforgettable sight of a nesting female; others offer only tracks in the sand and the quiet work of the monitoring team. The magic lies precisely in that uncertainty.

A row of palm trees with the tropical beach and crystal-clear water behind at Praia Boi Beach.

A Night on the Beach: What the Experience Looks Like

KEY FACT: Groups are kept deliberately small – a maximum of six guests per guide, including children.

For guests staying with us, a typical turtle outing is intimate, simple and deeply atmospheric.

  • Start time: Around 18:30–19:00, your guide leads you to one of the island's key nesting beaches, such as Praia Grande.
     
  • First stop – Kaxí‑Tetuga Museum: Guests will visit the small museum run by Fundação Príncipe. Here, you learn about the turtles' life cycle, the threats they face – from coastal erosion and predators to plastic pollution and illegal hunting – and the conservation work being carried out on the island.
     
  • On the beach: After the museum, you walk along the shore with your guide and the Fundação Príncipe beach monitors, moving quietly and slowly in the dark. Groups are kept deliberately small – a maximum of six guests per guide, including children – to minimise disturbance and keep the experience personal.
     
  • At night, the beach comes alive with movement. As Vander Santo, Principe Collection's Experiences Manager, likes to remind guests with a smile, there are plenty of crabs scuttling across the sand, so it's wise to watch your step – and not to be alarmed if something small brushes past your ankles in the dark.


What You Might Witness Under Moonlight

GOOD TO KNOW: You may see both nesting turtles and the monitoring team at work – every visit supports real conservation.

Nature follows its own rhythm, and every turtle encounter is shaped by timing and the quiet work of conservation. But when everything aligns, the scenes are unforgettable:

  • Nesting females – You may see a turtle emerge from the surf, dig her nest and begin to lay. During this process, Fundação Príncipe’s beach monitors carefully measure and, if necessary, tag the turtles. Tagging is vital because sea turtles spend more than 90% of their lives at sea, far from our eyes. By tagging individuals, researchers can begin to understand their migratory routes, where they feed, how they use different marine habitats and how far they travel between nesting and feeding grounds – often hundreds or even thousands of miles.
     
  • Monitoring and data collection – If your visit coincides with a nesting event, you might watch the team at work: recording measurements, checking tags, and noting the location of the nest.
     
  • Tracks and signs – Even on nights when no turtle appears, the sand itself tells stories: fresh tracks, nest sites, and the careful footprints of the beach monitors who patrol day and night.

Sometimes, very rarely, guests witness something truly extraordinary. Emma Tuzinkiewicz, our HBD Príncipe Sustainability Director, recalls one such night:

"Watching a leatherback sea turtle nest at Príncipe's Praia Grande was one of the most magical experiences of my life. They are enormous – the largest of all living turtles – and yet so gentle and determined. I lingered in awe for a long time just watching her work. It's the kind of moment that stays with you forever.”

HOTELS AND RESORTS BY HBD PRÍNCIPE

The "Boil" and the Swimming Frenzy: A Daytime Wonder

KEY FACT: A “boil” is when the sand suddenly erupts with dozens of tiny hatchlings all at once.

If your timing is right during the hatching season, you may witness what conservationists call a "boil" – the moment when the surface of the sand begins to tremble and suddenly erupts with dozens of tiny hatchlings.

During the day, Fundação Príncipe monitors excavate naturally hatched nests to assess hatching success. While they never hold back hatching events, they do carefully collect any hatchlings that struggled to emerge on their own and release them during daylight hours, giving guests the rare chance to witness this extraordinary moment.

Driven entirely by instinct, the hatchlings scramble towards the brightest horizon – such as the reflection of the sun on the ocean – and the natural slope of the beach. Their journey looks frantic, almost chaotic, but every movement is purposeful: away from the shadows, towards the sea.

Once they reach the water, the hatchlings enter a "swimming frenzy", paddling with astonishing energy to reach deeper, safer offshore waters. It is a brief, breath‑holding window into the most vulnerable minutes of their lives – and an experience that feels especially powerful for children, who often find themselves cheering the tiny turtles on.

It's a lucky few who witness a sea turtle's very first steps into the world. Seeing them make their way into the ocean is an unforgettable, almost otherworldly moment.

Newly hatched baby turtle heading to the ocean on Príncipe Island

Ethics First: How We Protect What You've Come to See

GOOD TO KNOW: The welfare of the turtles always comes before the visitor experience.

Turtle-watching on Príncipe is designed around one clear principle: the welfare of the turtles always comes before the visitor experience.

Before entering the beach, your guide will brief you on a few simple but essential rules, based on Fundação Príncipe's good‑practice guidelines:

  • No touching – neither nesting females nor hatchlings. Human contact can stress the animals, alter their behaviour and even cause a female to abandon her nest. It can also expose hatchlings to chemicals such as sunscreen or insect repellent.
     
  • No white lights or flash photography – bright white light can disorient both adults and hatchlings, drawing them away from the sea. Guides and monitors use red lights, whose longer wavelength is less visible to turtles. This allows them to observe and work with minimal impact, protecting the animals' natural behaviour.
     
  • Keep a respectful distance and stay quiet – this is their night, not ours.

As Jaconias Pereira, General Supervisor of the Fundação Príncipe ProTetuga team, puts it:

"My work with the ProTetuga project has contributed significantly to the protection of sea turtles on Príncipe and to the involvement of local communities. Through monitoring and awareness activities, we maintain strong cooperation between fishers and the protection team.”

Two locals in light blue Pro Tetuga T-shirts and shorts smile at us on Príncipe Island beach.

Community at the Heart of Conservation

KEY FACT: In the 2025–2026 season, around 31 people – including five women – are directly employed in turtle conservation.

One of the most powerful aspects of turtle season on Príncipe is how deeply the local communities are involved. Every beach monitor and supervisor in the ProTetuga team is from a local community. In the 2025–2026 season, around 31 people – including five women – are directly employed in turtle conservation. Local monitors patrol the beaches day and night, watching over nests and recording activity.

Guides from the island's official guide association and from HBD are specially trained by Fundação Príncipe to lead ethical turtle‑watching excursions and to share the conservation message with visitors.

Each guest who joins a turtle outing also contributes financially: From the price of the experience, €15 per adult and €10 per child (6–12 years) go directly to the Community Fund managed by Fundação Príncipe.

This fund supports the Community Competition, which rewards villages that keep their areas clean, adopt sustainable practices and avoid turtle hunting or egg poaching. Over four months, communities interested in participating in the Community Competition submit proposals for projects that would benefit their own villages. If selected, these communities are evaluated on criteria such as the cleanliness of their area, implementation of good environmental practices, and a demonstrated absence of turtle hunting or egg poaching. Rather than awarding cash, Fundação Príncipe provides direct support by paying suppliers for the approved community projects. This approach ensures that the benefits go directly to meaningful local initiatives while reinforcing conservation values.

Behind the numbers are stories of real change. One of the most striking is that of Senhor Nelo, from the community of Santo Cristo. Once a prolific turtle hunter, he stopped after participating in ProTetuga's awareness activities. Today, he actively encourages other fishers to protect turtles and even won a Fishermen's Competition organised by Fundação Príncipe, sharing his story live on local radio as an example of transformation.

A person floating on a small wooden boat over the sea near São Tomé Island

Measurable Impact: Tens of Thousands of Hatchlings

GOOD TO KNOW: Some seasons have seen more than 150,000 hatchlings released from Príncipe’s beaches.

Since 2015, Fundação Príncipe and the ProTetuga project have been monitoring and protecting nests across the island. Season after season, the number of hatchlings released back to the sea has grown, with peaks of more than 150,000 babies in a single year.

In the 2024–2025 season alone, 28,886 hatchlings were safely released from Príncipe's beaches – each one a tiny, determined ambassador for the island's future.

 

Why Turtle-Watching on Príncipe Feels Different

KEY FACT: Around the world, turtle-watching has become popular – but Príncipe offers something rare:

  • Wild, largely untouched beaches with difficult access and no mass tourism.
  • Small groups and low‑impact visits, always led by trained guides and community monitors using red lights and strict ethical protocols.
  • Deep community ownership, from the people patrolling the beaches to the children painting murals that read "a live turtle is worth more than a dead turtle".

Here, there are no crowds, no bright lights and no staged encounters. Just you, a handful of fellow travellers, and the possibility of witnessing one of nature's oldest rituals under a sky full of stars.

Turquoise footprint on beige background as a print at Sundy Praia

Experiences That Stay With You

For different guests, turtle season speaks in different ways:

  • For nature lovers, it is a night of pure awe – watching an animal that may have crossed oceans return, with astonishing precision, to the beach where her life began.
     
  • For families, it is a gentle, powerful way to talk with children about the cycles of life, patience, and the impact of plastic and pollution – all while walking on a dark beach alive with crabs and waves, and perhaps watching hatchlings race towards the surf during a daytime release.
     
  • For seasoned luxury travellers, it is a reminder that true luxury can be as simple as standing barefoot in the sand, far from any crowds, witnessing something that very few people on earth will ever see. This is not a high‑gloss, "heels in the sand" experience; it is raw, elemental and deeply moving.

As Emma reflects,

"If you're lucky enough to be there when a turtle nests or when hatchlings make a dash for the sea, it feels almost spiritual. It's the kind of experience that lives in your heart and wows your brain long after you've left the island.”

 

Beyond the Beach: Complementary Experiences

To deepen your connection with Príncipe's marine world during turtle season, we recommend pairing your night on the beach with:

  • A boat trip or snorkelling excursion, to experience the waters these turtles call home – with the chance, if you are lucky, of seeing one gliding beneath the surface.
     
  • A beach clean‑up or quiet candlelit dinner by the shore, reflecting on how the moon, the tides and the health of our oceans shape the lives of these animals.

Together, these moments create a narrative that is as much about people as it is about turtles: an island learning to protect what makes it unique – and sharing this with you.

Our Shared Commitment

Fundação Príncipe, through the ProTetuga project, has been monitoring and protecting sea turtles on Príncipe since 2015, working closely with regional authorities, local communities and partners such as HBD. The shared vision is simple and ambitious:

To make Príncipe a true sanctuary for sea turtles – and a global example of how conservation and community can thrive together.

 

Every guest who joins a turtle outing becomes part of that story. You may arrive hoping for a photograph; you are likely to leave with something far more enduring: a sense of wonder, responsibility and connection that stays long after the footprints and turtle tracks have washed away.

Three locals on Principe Island beach, one holding a plastic container.

Key Takeaways

  • Turtle season on Príncipe runs from November to April
    Nesting: November to February
    Hatching: February to April
     
  • Ethical guidelines ensure minimal disturbance to the turtles
     
  • Every guest contributes directly to local conservation
     
  • Príncipe offers one of the most intimate turtle-watching experiences in the world

 

Frequently Asked Questions

When is the best time to see turtles on Príncipe?
Between November and April. Nesting occurs early in the season; hatching later.

Are sightings guaranteed?
No – encounters depend entirely on natural conditions.

Can children join?
Yes. Children aged six and over may participate.

How long does a turtle outing last?
Typically two to three hours, starting shortly after sunset.

Which beaches are used for turtle-watching on Príncipe?
Praia Grande is the main nesting site visited with trained monitors.

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