Understanding sea turtles — and the marks they leave behind — is the first step to protecting them. This section will grow into a small library of guides for anyone curious about turtle conservation, from students and volunteers to the researchers using TortugaTracks in the field.

Reading a turtle track

When a female turtle hauls herself up the beach to nest, she leaves a track that tells a story: which species she is, which direction she travelled, and roughly where she may have laid. Different species leave different patterns — the width of the track and the shape of the flipper marks are clues that trained eyes, and increasingly trained models, can read.

Why tracks matter for conservation

Tracks are often easier to spot than nests themselves, especially from the air. Counting and classifying them helps researchers estimate how many turtles are nesting, where the hotspots are, and how those patterns change from season to season.

How AI helps

Reviewing hours of beach footage by hand is slow. TortugaTracks applies AI recognition to that imagery, flagging likely tracks so people can focus their attention where it matters most.

This is starter copy — expand it into the guides and resources you’d like to publish.