Tens Of Thousands Of Migrating Turtles Captured by Breathtaking Drone Footage (Pics & Video)

The world's largest green turtle rookery – an estimated 64,000 endangered green turtles – have been captured migrating off the coast of Raine Island, a 32-hectare vegetated coral cay situated on the outer edges of the Great Barrier Reef off north-eastern Australia. The breathtaking drone footage was captured in 2019 as part of the Raine Island Recovery Project, which aims at preserving the remote coral cay. Green turtle (Chelonia mydas) populations using the area to reproduce have been decreasing due to loss of habitat and overfishing, and are now listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List. Scientists on the island are busy rebuilding nesting beaches and putting up fences to prevent turtle deaths for the 60,000+ female green turtles that come to to lay eggs here every year in one of greatest animal migrations on planet Earth. We're seeing the world's largest aggregation of green turtles captured in these extraordinary drone images that are helping to document the largest turtle numbers seen since we began the Raine Island Recovery Project, said Great Barrier Reef Foundation Managing Director Anna Marsden.