Akumal closes its turtle nesting season at 922 nests across four beaches

Akumal's four monitored beaches recorded 922 sea turtle nests this season, 747 laid by green turtles and 175 by loggerheads, according to the figures Héctor Lizárraga Cubedo, director of the Centro Ecológico Akumal, gave 24 Horas Quintana Roo. The centre has not yet published its own season count. The split is the story: a season that opened almost entirely on loggerheads closed with green turtles outnumbering them by more than four to one.

A month ago we reported that Playa del Carmen had logged more than 2,000 turtle nests, and Akumal appeared in that piece only in passing, as the town whose name is usually translated from Maya as place of the turtles. This is the closing count from Akumal itself, counted beach by beach.

The figures were given by Héctor Lizárraga Cubedo, director of the Centro Ecológico Akumal, the civil organization that has protected and monitored sea turtles on four Akumal beaches under a government permit since 1993. They were reported by 24 Horas Quintana Roo on September 11. Lizárraga Cubedo described it as an upper middle season, "una temporada media alta", measured against a local record of 1,350 nests.

Four beaches, counted separately

Bahía Akumal, the main bay in front of the town, led the season with 400 nests, 345 of them green and 55 loggerhead. Playa Tortuga came next with 339, and it was the loggerheads' beach of choice: 78 of their 175 nests were laid there, alongside 261 green. Akumal Sur recorded 157, with 129 green and 28 loggerhead. Bahía Media Luna, the half moon bay, recorded 26, and was the only one of the four where loggerheads outnumbered greens, by 14 to 12.

Media Luna is also where the season began. The first loggerhead nest of 2026 was found there at the start of May, and by the end of that month the monitoring teams had counted 53 nests across the four beaches, 46 loggerhead and only seven green. The greens arrived with the summer. From seven nests in May they went to 747 by the close, which is why the final count looks nothing like the early one.

What the count does and does not tell you

Whether 922 is a good year depends on the yardstick. In May, Lizárraga Cubedo told Canal 10 that the two previous seasons had each run to around 770 nests, which on its face would make this the strongest of the three. The September report described the total as below recent years. Those two statements do not reconcile, and the Centro Ecológico Akumal has not yet published its full series, so the fairest reading is the director's own: an upper middle season, clearly short of the 1,350 record.

It is also a count of nests, not of turtles and not of hatchlings. No hatchling total for Akumal has been published. Some coverage placed Akumal's figures next to a total of about 40,000 hatchlings released this year, but that number belongs to a separate conservation program in Cancún. And a single season, strong or weak, is not a trend. Nest counts move from year to year for reasons nobody on the beach controls; when this season opened, the director named recurring sargassum as the main uncertainty. That is why the monitoring runs every year rather than only when the numbers look interesting.

The bay, the swim and the September pause

Akumal Bay has been a federal refuge for marine species since March 7, 2016, when the Diario Oficial de la Federación published the agreement creating it, with green, loggerhead and hawksbill turtles among the species it protects. Its protection program followed in October 2017. The rules that govern the turtle swim in the bay sit inside that framework, alongside the permits Semarnat issues to the operators who run it.

One of those rules is running now. Guided swims with the turtles in the bay are paused for the whole of September. Manuel Jiménez, owner of the operator H2O Adventures, told La Jornada Maya that the operators' Semarnat permits require them to stop in September and again in February. It is not a small thing locally: Jiménez counted 22 active cooperatives of five to ten people each working the swim, and put the share of Akumal that depends on it, directly or indirectly, at between 50 and 60 percent.

For anyone who owns or stays on these beaches, the season also comes with rules on land, repeated by the Centro Ecológico Akumal and the environmental authorities at its start: keep out of the marked nesting areas, no flashlights or camera flashes on the beach at night, and switch off the lights of businesses and homes that face the shore. Hatching continues after the laying stops, and the residents' association in Akumal Norte describes the hatchling season as running into November, so those rules matter well into the autumn.

For the wider picture on this coast, see our report on Playa del Carmen's 2,000 turtle nests, or read more about the town and its homes on our Akumal page.

Sources: 2026 closing nest count, species split and per beach figures, and the record of 1,350 nests, Héctor Lizárraga Cubedo, director of the Centro Ecológico Akumal, reported by 24 Horas Quintana Roo, September 11, 2026; total also reported by Novedades Quintana Roo, September 18, 2026. May nest counts and the nesting season rules, 24 Horas Quintana Roo, June 5, 2026. First loggerhead nest at Bahía Media Luna, the reference of about 770 nests in each of the two previous seasons and sargassum as the season's uncertainty, Héctor Lizárraga Cubedo to Canal 10, May 4, 2026. The September swim pause, permits and cooperatives, Manuel Jiménez of H2O Adventures, reported by La Jornada Maya, August 31, 2026. Refuge status, Diario Oficial de la Federación, March 7, 2016, and protection program, October 6, 2017. The Centro Ecológico Akumal's permit and four beaches, ceakumal.org. Hatchling season, Asociación de Vecinos de Akumal Norte, July 2025. Main image: green turtle off Akumal, by rainer schmidt, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.