Turtle Islands

The Turtle Islands lie about twenty-five kilometers off the southern coast of Sierra Leone, accessible by motorized pirogue from the mainland fishing town of Sherbro, itself reached by a combination of road and water that tests your patience in inverse proportion to your preparedness. There are seven islands, of which only Sei and Bakie have permanent communities. The population across all of them is perhaps a few hundred people. Sea turtles come in larger numbers.

Getting There Requires Commitment

The journey from Freetown involves a long road south to the Bonthe district, then a crossing by dugout or small boat to the island chain. The crossing to the Turtle Islands proper takes two to four hours depending on the sea state and the engine. I made it in three hours on a day with mild swell, wedged between fishing supplies and two passengers who slept through the entire thing with admirable efficiency.

The islands resolve from the water slowly — low on the horizon first, then trees, then the white line of the beach. There is no dock at Sei. You wade the last twenty meters.

Turtle Nesting Season

Green and leatherback sea turtles nest on the Turtle Islands’ beaches from roughly November through March, with peak activity in December and January. The beaches are among the most important sea turtle nesting sites in West Africa, a fact that was appreciated by researchers before it was appreciated by anyone making conservation policy. Community-based turtle monitoring programs now operate on the main islands, run by local rangers who combine traditional ecological knowledge with survey protocols.

I joined a night beach walk with a ranger named Musa who had been monitoring these nests for over a decade. We walked without lights initially, which is the protocol — artificial light disrupts the females’ orientation and can send them back into the surf. Musa moved in the dark with complete confidence, while I trusted his instructions about where to put my feet.

We found a leatherback about two hours in, already excavating her nest above the tide line. The animal was enormous — well over a meter long, her front flippers leaving half-meter sweeps in the sand. We watched from the side and behind, as instructed, making no sound. The egg-laying took about twenty minutes. Afterward she spent longer filling the nest and scattering sand, then turned and made her way back down the slope to the water. The whole sequence took perhaps forty-five minutes. Musa said the turtles were more important than anything else on the islands and said it like he’d thought about this for a long time and arrived at certainty.

The Villages

Life on Sei Island is organized around fishing and small-scale subsistence agriculture, with the occasional NGO project in the background. The community is largely Sherbro, one of the smaller ethnic groups of Sierra Leone’s south, and the island has the social texture of a place that has maintained its own logic for a long time without outside reference. Children followed me at a curious distance for about an hour before deciding I was uninteresting and returning to their previous occupations.

The fishing here is extraordinary — the waters around the islands are rich and largely uncompeted for. I ate fish at every meal and the fish was always different: barracuda, snapper, grouper, smaller reef species I had no name for. It was grilled or fried over wood fire and arrived with rice and a sauce that was red and oily and had some heat to it. I ate until I couldn’t and then the host produced fruit.

Snorkeling and the Reef

The reef systems around the outer islands are accessible and in good condition by the standards of coastal West Africa — limited industrial fishing pressure has left them relatively intact. The visibility in dry season reaches fifteen meters in calm conditions. I spent a morning in the water and saw more biomass than I’ve encountered in more famous dive destinations. The reef itself was structurally healthy: coral cover, reef fish in variety, a nurse shark that materialized from below and glided past without acknowledgment.

When to go: November to February for turtle nesting season — this is the primary draw and the best timing coincides with the dry season and calmest sea conditions. The crossing from the mainland can be dangerous in rough weather; the May to October rainy season brings swells that make the journey inadvisable. Arrange logistics through Bonthe or through Freetown-based operators with island connections.