There may be more than one nesting female in a male's territory.

The mature nesting female hauls herself onto the beach, nearly always at night, and finds suitable sand on which to create a nest.

The authors attributed the overall increase to 'effective protection of eggs and nesting females, as well as reduced bycatch'.

The population of more than 200,000 nesting females in the northern reef could eventually crash without more males, according to the research.

More recently, the global population of annual nesting females has been reduced to about two million by 2004, and was further reduced to 852,550 by 2008.