00:00More than 9,000 turtle hatchlings have made their way to the ocean after they were relocated from
00:06Rain Island on the outskirts of the Great Barrier Reef to Sir Charles Hardy Islands as part of a
00:13conservation project. Climate change is leading to warmer sand temperatures. This is quite
00:18concerning for Rain Island because already 99% of the hatchlings that leave this island are females
00:24and we're really concerned that this population is feminizing. Approximately 90% of the northern
00:31Great Barrier Reef green turtles nest on Rain Island. Because the sand temperature determines
00:38the sex of the hatchlings we have built a shade structure on Sir Charles Hardy which will cool
00:43the sand and this will lower the sand temperatures and hopefully produce more male hatchlings. So
00:49tonight we are out here on Rain Island collecting green turtle eggs. So to do this we're catching
00:55the eggs as they're being laid and once the turtles finish laying we're taking all these eggs up to the
01:00team for processing. They are being put into bags flushed with nitrogen and vacuum sealed. This puts
01:06the eggs into our hypoxia state and it means that they can go for a boat ride down to Sir
01:11Charles Hardy
01:12within Woodardee Sea Country and then once there we're going to be putting those eggs into the ground
01:16to hopefully produce more male hatchlings. When researchers and traditional owners returned to
01:22the island they found 82.4 percent of the eggs had successfully hatched. Sand temperatures successfully
01:30dropped two degrees under the shelter which will hopefully lead to more male hatchlings.
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