Endangered Leatherbacks Find New Nesting Beaches in Ecuador
In January 2026, a leatherback turtle that researchers named Bella came ashore at Playa de Crucita in Ecuador to lay her eggs. Streetlights threw her off course. She climbed over a rock breakwater, ended up on a sidewalk and went back to the ocean with her eggs still inside her.
Two nights later she tried a quieter stretch of beach and laid 47 eggs. A few weeks after that, 44 hatchlings crawled out and made for the surf. By the end of the season she had nested four or five times. Of the 146 eggs she laid, 134 hatched, a 91.8 percent success rate, on a coast more than 1,000 miles from where her kind usually nests.
A record season far to the south
Bella had company. A study in Chelonian Conservation and Biology, published online October 19, 2026 and announced by Simon Fraser University (SFU) in British Columbia on November 9, found a record number of eastern Pacific leatherback nests on several Ecuadorian beaches during the 2025-2026 season. This population's usual nesting grounds lie in Mexico and Costa Rica, about 1,600 km to the north.
The team went through more than 45 years of records from Ecuador's coast. They counted sightings of adult females, nests, nesting attempts, hatching success and strandings (turtles found dead or stuck on shore). Then they set those records against El Niño and La Niña, the Pacific cycles that push sea temperatures warmer and cooler. Juan José Alava, an adjunct professor in SFU's School of Resource and Environmental Management and a leading co-author, says a nesting female on an Ecuadorian beach used to be a rare sight.
Why the cool years matter
Over the last decade, nesting in Ecuador rose during La Niña, the cool phase of the cycle. The authors suggest leatherbacks may be answering a warming ocean by moving to coastlines that run cooler. Alava says the findings suggest the turtles "are adapting their reproductive cycle" to coastal Ecuador. That is the authors' reading of a pattern. The records tie the busiest nesting to La Niña years, and a single record season cannot show that the move will last.
The hatch numbers hold up either way. Nest yield, meaning the number of eggs per nest, and hatch rates in Ecuador matched those on the northern grounds. Alava says some Ecuadorian nests produced more hatchlings than usual. Whatever the long-term pattern turns out to be, these beaches sent turtles to sea this season.
A population with little room left
The good season lands on a population in deep trouble. Eastern Pacific leatherbacks have dropped by more than 90 percent since the 1980s, SFU reports, and Alava says the subspecies is on track for extinction in the eastern Pacific within 60 years. Warm El Niño episodes, made worse by climate change, hit them. So do fishing bycatch (turtles caught by accident in gear set for fish), plastic pollution, boat strikes, egg harvesting and the loss of nesting beaches. In 2018, the State of the World's Sea Turtles (SWOT) project estimated the population might be down to fewer than 1,000 adult females.
Leatherbacks are the only sea turtles that do well in both warm and cold water. Every year they swim thousands of miles from tropical nesting beaches to subpolar feeding grounds, where they eat jellyfish in summer.
What protection looks like next
Alava lists the work that will decide whether Ecuador's beaches keep producing hatchlings: ongoing monitoring, bycatch mitigation and coastal zone management. He wants it planned in close consultation with local communities and their traditional ecological knowledge. Some of the groundwork exists already. The Eastern Pacific Leatherback Network, known by its Spanish acronym LaudOPO and founded in 2016, links teams on nesting beaches in Mexico, Costa Rica and Nicaragua with bycatch reduction programs in Ecuador, Peru and Chile.
📍 Multiple Perspectives on the Story
A second set of nesting beaches
A population that nests on a handful of beaches in two countries has every egg in a small number of baskets. One bad season there, from heat or development or poaching, hits the whole subspecies. If Ecuador keeps drawing females, and its nests keep hatching at northern rates, the population gains a second region to fall back on. That "if" depends on more seasons of counts, which the 45-year record is built to supply.
Saving clutches, one nest at a time
Of Bella's four or five nests, one stayed where she laid it. Staff moved the rest to the San Jacinto hatchery. The release does not split hatch rates between the moved nests and the one left in place, so it cannot say how much the move helped. A hatchery also cannot fix the beach itself. More females on lit, built-up shoreline is why the authors list coastal zone management next to monitoring.
Fishers already map where turtles meet nets
SWOT's 2018 report describes bycatch work that started before this study. In July 2017, fishers in Colombia and Panama were trained to log leatherback encounters with handheld GPS units and digital cameras. Teams ran 800 surveys in 15 ports, seven in Colombia and eight in Panama. Panama logged seven entanglement reports from Puerto Mutis and Remedios, near Coiba National Park. Those records show where nets and turtles overlap, which is where protection at sea has to start.
Why a Canadian university cares about an Ecuadorian beach
The SFU release counts more than 150 leatherback records off British Columbia between 1931 and 2024. It does not say which nesting population those animals came from. The records do show how far north leatherbacks travel to feed, and why researchers on Canada's Pacific coast track what happens on beaches near the equator.
A record, but against what number?
Neither the SFU release nor the Phys.org story gives a total nest count for the season, so "record" has no figure attached. The paper itself could not be read: the DOI link returned "not found" and the journal page blocked access on November 11, 2026. If the rise rides on La Niña, a run of El Niño years could reverse it. The fewer-than-1,000 estimate dates to 2018, and these sources give no newer count. One strong season is a lead worth following, not a recovery.
What to watch next
The 2026-2027 season will be the first test of whether Ecuador's numbers hold. The paper's full nest counts, once readable, will put a figure on the record. Tagged females such as Bella can show whether the same turtles come back to Ecuador in later years. And local decisions about streetlights, beach building and fishing gear along the coast will decide how many of the next clutches reach the sea.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where are leatherback turtles nesting in Ecuador?
On several beaches along Ecuador's coast, including Playa de Crucita. A study in Chelonian Conservation and Biology found a record number of eastern Pacific leatherback nests there in the 2025-2026 season, about 1,600 km (1,000 miles) south of the usual nesting grounds in Mexico and Costa Rica.
Why are leatherbacks nesting farther south?
Nesting in Ecuador rose during cool La Niña years over the last decade. The authors suggest the turtles may be adapting to a warming ocean by seeking cooler coastlines. That is their interpretation of a correlation, and one record season does not prove a lasting shift.
How well do nests in Ecuador hatch?
Nest yield and hatch rates in Ecuador were comparable to the northern nesting grounds, according to Simon Fraser University. One tagged female, Bella, laid 146 eggs in 2026, and 134 hatched, a 91.8 percent success rate.
How endangered is the eastern Pacific leatherback?
The population has fallen by more than 90 percent since the 1980s. Study co-author Juan José Alava says it is on track for extinction in the eastern Pacific within 60 years. A 2018 State of the World's Sea Turtles report estimated there may be fewer than 1,000 adult females left.