Eastern Pacific leatherbacks set a nesting record on several beaches in Ecuador during the 2025–2026 season, more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from their usual nesting grounds in Mexico and Costa Rica. The newly reported pattern suggests Ecuador may be becoming an important nesting area for this critically endangered sea turtle.
A report published by Phys.org and provided by Simon Fraser University describes a study published in Chelonian Conservation and Biology. Researchers reviewed more than 45 years of records of adult female sightings, nests, hatching success, nesting attempts and strandings along Ecuador’s coast. They compared those records with El Niño and La Niña events, which bring warmer and cooler sea-surface conditions in the region.
The records show increased leatherback activity and nesting in Ecuador during cold La Niña episodes over the past decade. Juan José Alava, an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Resource and Environmental Management and a leading co-author of the study, says the findings suggest the turtles may be adjusting their reproductive cycle to use Ecuador’s coast. The pattern links nesting activity with temperature cycles, but the report does not establish that ocean warming caused the change in nesting location.
The Ecuador nests also appear capable of producing hatchlings at rates comparable to nests in the turtles’ traditional nesting grounds farther north. The report says nest yield—the number of eggs in a nest—and hatch rates were comparable, and that some Ecuador nests produced more hatchlings than usual. These comparisons are encouraging, though they do not by themselves show how many hatchlings will survive after reaching the sea or whether nesting in Ecuador will remain consistent over time.
The stakes are high. The eastern Pacific leatherback population has fallen by more than 90% since the 1980s, according to the report. Its decline is associated with several pressures, including warm El Niño episodes made worse by human-caused climate change, fishing bycatch, plastic pollution, vessel strikes, egg harvesting and the loss of nesting habitat. Leatherbacks migrate thousands of miles between tropical nesting beaches and subpolar Pacific feeding grounds, where they eat jellyfish. Their broad range and ability to thrive in both warm and cold environments provide context for why new nesting areas could matter, but do not guarantee the population’s recovery.
One turtle’s season illustrates both the challenges on Ecuador’s beaches and the value of monitoring. In 2026, a tagged female researchers named Bella came ashore at Playa de Crucita. Nearby streetlights disoriented her, and she climbed over a rock breakwater onto a sidewalk without nesting. Two nights later, she nested on a quieter part of the beach. One of her nests remained in place while others were moved to the San Jacinto hatchery. Researchers recorded four to five nesting attempts by Bella that year: she laid 146 eggs, from which 134 hatchlings emerged, a reported overall success rate of 91.8%.
Alava says sustained monitoring, efforts to reduce fishing bycatch and coastal management that protects Ecuador’s nesting beaches are needed for the turtles’ long-term survival. He also calls for conservation work shaped in close consultation with coastal communities and traditional ecological knowledge. The reported increase in nesting offers a reason to pay attention to Ecuador’s beaches; it does not erase the multiple threats facing the eastern Pacific population.