Sea Turtle Watching — Meeting the Island’s Most Famous Residents
Zakynthos is the most important nesting ground for loggerhead sea turtles in the entire Mediterranean. Every summer, roughly 1,200 females crawl onto the beaches of Laganas Bay — the same beaches they were born on, potentially fifty years before — to lay their eggs in the sand. The National Marine Park was created specifically to protect them, and a carefully managed boat tour programme allows visitors to observe them without disrupting the nesting cycle.
This is one of the best wildlife experiences in Greece. But it requires choosing your operator carefully and knowing what you’re actually going to see.
The Turtles
Caretta caretta — the loggerhead sea turtle — can live to over eighty years and weigh up to 140 kilograms. The adults are the ones you’ll see on morning boat tours, surfacing to breathe and floating on the current in the warm, sheltered waters of Laganas Bay. They’re surprisingly unfazed by quiet boats that maintain proper distance, and will often surface within a few metres, revealing the orange-brown domed shell and the ancient, deliberate eye contact that makes grown adults stop talking.
Hatchlings appear from late August onwards — tiny black shapes making their desperate sprint to the water in the first hour of darkness. Witnessing a nest hatch is not part of the standard tour, but Archelon (the Sea Turtle Protection Society) runs volunteer observation sessions at certain beaches that are accessible by application.
The Tour
Laganas-based operators run tours daily from May through September. Boats depart from the Laganas pier at various times, though early morning departures (07:00–09:00) offer significantly better encounter rates. The bay is calm in the mornings, the turtles are surface-active, and you’ll often have the water largely to yourselves before the day-trip boats fill up.
A good tour covers three to four kilometres of the bay in a boat that cuts the engine when turtles are sighted. You drift. You watch. The guide explains the conservation situation — and it is precarious, despite protected status. Light pollution, beach umbrellas placed too close to nest sites, and plastic ingestion all threaten the population. Understanding the stakes makes the encounter more meaningful.
Tour duration is typically two to three hours. Bring water, sun protection, and binoculars if you have them.
Choosing a Responsible Operator
This matters more here than with most activities. Some operators prioritise sightings over turtle welfare — chasing animals, getting too close, overcrowding the bay. Look for operators who are:
- Members of the Marine Park’s authorised programme
- Using boats with underwater cameras or glass-bottom sections (you see more without disturbing)
- Maintaining at least 100 metres distance from turtles unless animals approach voluntarily
- Providing conservation information during the tour
The Laganas Marine Park visitor centre can provide a current list of authorised operators. As of 2025, there are six licensed operators running ethical tours.
Beyond the Boat
If you want to go deeper, Archelon accepts volunteers and day visitors at their field stations during nesting season. Nest monitoring, hatchling counts, and beach patrols are all activities that visitors can participate in with advance coordination. Their website has details; it’s worth the extra effort.
The Marine Park visitor centre in Laganas is free to enter and provides excellent context — turtle biology, nesting ecology, conservation history — that makes the boat tour far more meaningful if you do it first.
When to Go
Peak nesting is June through July. Peak hatching is August through October. For seeing adult turtles on morning boat tours, any point from late May through mid-September works well. The bay is flat calm most mornings until about 10:00, after which Ionian winds pick up and make boat trips bumpier.
