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Nature Trust has announced the end of the turtle nesting season, with no turtles recorded, while marine biologist Alan Deidun warned that the situation should not be viewed as an ‘isolated Maltese phenomenon’
Malta and Gozo have recorded no successful sea turtle nests this year, in what marine biologist Alan Deidun says should not be viewed as an isolated Maltese phenomenon.
Earlier this week, Nature Trust Malta announced the end of the turtle nesting season; which this year resulted in no successful nests.
Deidun said the number of nests had also fallen sharply across the western and northern Mediterranean, suggesting that broader environmental changes may be playing a role. “It is not a Maltese phenomenon,” Deidun said.
He pointed to Italy, where turtle nesting numbers have also dropped significantly. By this stage of the season, Italy would normally have recorded more than 500 to 600 nests, he said, but this year the figure stands at just over 250. “So, it went down by more than half,” Deidun said.
Nature Trust said volunteers experienced a “rollercoaster of emotions”, from the excitement of discovering turtle crawls to the disappointment of finding that they were false crawls, where a turtle emerges from the sea but returns without laying eggs.
In one case, a turtle dug a nesting chamber and remained there for around two hours without laying a single egg.
Other turtles emerged in unsuitable or heavily used areas, including beaches where human activity made it difficult for them to reach a suitable nesting spot.
The organisation said its monitored beaches had to be increased from seven to 17 during the season, with volunteers stepping in to cover the additional workload.
Volunteers will continue patrolling until the end of August in case a late-nesting turtle emerges.
For Deidun, the fact that turtles were repeatedly seen attempting to nest is significant. “The turtles are there. The turtles are in the water,” he said, pointing to the false crawls, nesting attempts and turtle rescues taking place at sea.
The question, therefore, is not necessarily whether turtles have disappeared from Maltese waters, but why they are not successfully nesting.
Deidun stressed that there is no definitive answer yet and that determining the cause would require substantial research. However, he identified three plausible factors: human disturbance, changes to Mediterranean surface currents and rising sand temperatures.
Human pressure
The first factor is the intensity of human activity on Malta’s beaches. “Our beaches are overcrowded,” Deidun said, pointing to noise, artificial lighting and increasing numbers of boats as potential obstacles for nesting turtles.
A turtle approaching a beach has to navigate its way through boats moored offshore before even reaching the shoreline, he said.
Malta also lacks a beach specifically cordoned off for turtle nesting, Deidun said.
He contrasted this with Lampedusa’s Spiaggia dei Conigli, or Rabbit Beach, where people are still allowed to use the beach but restrictions are imposed to create conditions in which turtles can nest.
There are no kiosks, artificial lights or music on the beach, he said.
“At least, even though people can use the beach, turtles can still nest there,” he said, describing it as a form of coexistence. He added that in Malta, this sort of thing doesn’t exist, “at least so far.”
Nature Trust has previously documented the consequences of human disturbance. In July, the organisation said a turtle attempting to nest at Balluta Bay was confronted by people talking loudly and using phone flashes, causing the animal to turn around and return to the sea.
Nature Trust also reported that another turtle had attempted to reach the sand at Armier but turned back after being unable to crawl up the beach because sunbeds were blocking its path.
A Mediterranean under heat stress
Deidun’s second concern is the warming of the Mediterranean and the resulting changes to surface currents.
Sea turtles travelling long distances exploit surface currents to reduce the energy they need to expend, he explained.
But as the sea warms, those currents can change. “Surface currents are pushing things in different directions than they used to,” he said.
The issue comes against a backdrop of exceptional marine heat this year. A study reported by The Guardian this week found a dramatic expansion of marine heatwaves across European waters, with sea surface temperatures in some areas up to 6C above normal. Researchers estimated that climate change was responsible for roughly two-thirds of the excess heat observed.
Global sea surface temperatures also reached their highest level ever recorded for July this year, according to data from the EU’s Copernicus climate monitoring service, with severe marine heatwaves affecting the western Mediterranean.
For Deidun, the implications extend far beyond turtles. “Climate change is wreaking havoc with everything we know, with what we’ve witnessed so far,” he said. “It is the major driver of processes in nature.”
He said temperature is a major factor in determining where migratory species move, whether fish, turtles or birds. “When you have things which are migrating and they do not have a fixed location, this is not like a grouper, which is sort of territorial and sticks to its patch,” he said. “Species change their migration patterns depending on where they have the food, where they’re finding food, and temperature is a major driver.”
The sand could also be working against turtles
A third possible factor is the temperature of the sand itself. With Malta experiencing intense summer heat, Deidun said turtles could be looking for beaches elsewhere where the sand is cooler and therefore more suitable for nesting, but hotter sand has another important consequence.
The temperature at which turtle eggs develop affects the sex ratio of hatchlings, with warmer conditions producing a greater proportion of females.
Deidun said the higher temperatures closer to the surface mean that eggs positioned higher in a nest are more likely to develop into females, while cooler conditions deeper in the nest favour males.
The issue is therefore not simply whether a turtle succeeds in laying eggs this summer, but whether increasingly hot nesting conditions could affect turtle populations over the longer term.
Where have the jellyfish gone?
The changing marine environment is already being noticed in other ways around Malta. Deidun said the mauve stinger jellyfish has failed to appear for the second consecutive year.
He said discussions with Italian colleagues suggested the jellyfish could be remaining in deeper waters to avoid the extreme temperatures closer to the surface. “They’re sticking to deep waters and not rising to the surface to avoid being damaged by the warm waters,” he said.
The absence of the mauve stinger is another example of how marine species can respond to rapidly changing conditions, although, as with the turtle nesting decline, Deidun stressed that the precise causes require further research.
For Malta’s turtles, meanwhile, this year’s empty nests mark a sharp contrast with recent seasons.
Nature Trust previously recorded six nests in 2025 and eight in 2024, while the organisation has noted that turtle nesting naturally varies between slow and peak years.
But this year has been different enough to raise concerns. Nature Trust said the season had shown that Malta “cannot take anything for granted”, noting that the fact that there has been at least one nest every year does not mean this is guaranteed to continue.
Deidun’s assessment is similarly cautious. The turtles are still in the Mediterranean and they are still reaching Malta’s shores, but as the sea heats up, currents shift, beaches become busier and sand temperatures rise, the conditions waiting for them on land may be becoming increasingly difficult.
And Malta, he warned, is not experiencing this alone. “In this part of the Mediterranean, in the central Mediterranean, nesting is down all over the place,” Deidun said.
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