After a life of captivity James Cook University turtle researchers are releasing baby loggerhead turtles back into the wild, tracking them as they begin their journey home.
Professor Mark Hamann, Director of JCU's Turtle Research Group, is leading the return of 13 four-year-old loggerhead turtles to the wild.
"They were collected as hatchlings from Mon Repo, which is a nesting beach in southern Queensland," Prof Hamann said.
"The original intention was to collect baseline health data for loggerhead turtles.
"We're releasing them in Bowen … a perfect place to put these turtles out. Somewhere close, somewhere where the turtles live, somewhere where we can get access to get our boats in the water."
The loggerhead turtles have been raised in tanks at JCU's Turtle Health Research Centre since 2021, funded through Glencore's community grants program.
"We have 30 to 35 volunteers at any one time and many school and university groups coming through every year," Prof Hamann said.
"Students and visitors are happy and excited about seeing turtles.
"At the moment they're 50 to 60 centimetres, 20 kilos or so. They're going to get to about 100 kilos. We're still looking at 15 to 20 years before they're breeding.
"It makes them babies."
The turtles will be safely transported from Townsville in tubs in the back of a van, then put into the boat straight away and released into the waters off Bowen.
"We'll have 12 of our JCU team go down, plus four Rangers from Gudjuda Aboriginal Corporation," Prof Hamann said.
"Turtles in general are a very important species for North Queensland First Nations people."
The released turtles will wear trackers to enable researchers and rangers to follow their movements.
"This release marks the culmination of a landmark study on loggerhead turtle health … it's an exciting milestone," said Jessica Grimm, JCU's Academic Coordinator.
"We're really interested to see what they're going to do, where they're going to go,
"There's very few studies of that and it's still a bit of a mystery."
