. Current herpetology. Reptiles; Herpetology. 96 Current Herpetol. 21(2) 2002 â I^H pp Wl H Hi ^ ^v .t-.^'. Fig. 2. The nesting leatherback turtle, Dermochelys coriacea, on Katoku Beach, Amami-oshima Island. Photographed on 28 July 2002 by Yoichi Baba. The 20 apparently normal eggs from the first nest were moved to a styroform box for incubation under permission from the Fisher- ies Agency of Japan. However, no external signs of post-ovipositional development (Chan, 1989) were observed thereafter. One egg, opened on the eighth day, had a blastodisc, but with no indications of development from
. Current herpetology. Reptiles; Herpetology. 96 Current Herpetol. 21(2) 2002 â I^H pp Wl H Hi ^ ^v .t-.^'. Fig. 2. The nesting leatherback turtle, Dermochelys coriacea, on Katoku Beach, Amami-oshima Island. Photographed on 28 July 2002 by Yoichi Baba. The 20 apparently normal eggs from the first nest were moved to a styroform box for incubation under permission from the Fisher- ies Agency of Japan. However, no external signs of post-ovipositional development (Chan, 1989) were observed thereafter. One egg, opened on the eighth day, had a blastodisc, but with no indications of development from the ovipositional stage (Miller, 1985). In the Ryukyu Archipelago, where Amami- oshima Island is located, three species of marine turtles, the loggerhead turtle Caretta caretta, the green turtle Chelonia mydas, and the hawksbill turtle Eretmochelys imbricata, are known to nest (Kamezaki, 1989). One case of nesting of the leatherback turtle was once mentioned by an inhabitant on another island (Zamamijima Island of the Okinawa Group) but without any substantial evidence (H. Ota, private communication). The observation made on 28 June 2002 thus offers the first confirmed record of nesting of this species in Japan. The number of eggs found in the first nest (34 including the abnormal eggs) was much smaller than the ordinary size of a nest clutch in the leatherback turtle (Marquez, 1990). This, along with the extreme softness of the sand covering that nest, suggests that a large proportion of eggs originally laid therein had already been poached by someone when the nest was examined by us on 30 June. With respect to the second nest, the emerg- ing female was not observed. Even so, how- ever, there is no doubt that this nest also belonged to the leatherback turtle, because size of its eggs ( mm) was much larger than that of eggs of the other marine turtles nesting in the Ryukyus (34-46 mm: Kamezaki, 1987), and fell within the known range of egg sizes in the leatherback tur
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