Around midnight in early August, patrol teams working the sand in front of Médano Beach's resorts weren't looking for late-night swimmers or beach club stragglers. They were following turtle tracks. Over three nights, teams relocated more than 26,000 eggs to protected incubation spaces, working fast enough that no nest was lost to predators or human disturbance before sunrise brought the crowds back.
That's the kind of number that sounds like a normal Los Cabos summer story. It isn't. Médano is the beach with the jet ski rentals and the water taxis, the one lined with resorts and beach clubs, the busiest stretch of sand in Cabo San Lucas on any given afternoon. Wildlife officials were blunt about it: this is not where turtles usually choose to nest, which is exactly what made the event stand out. Somewhere between the loungers and the ocean, in a strip of beach most residents think of purely as a place to swim or grab a drink, sea turtles decided this was safe ground to lay their eggs.
A Beach That Wasn't Supposed to Do This
Officials monitoring the event pointed to shifting water temperatures or current changes as a possible explanation for turtles coming in closer to shore than usual. Nobody is calling it a confirmed pattern yet. What is confirmed is what hotel security and municipal conservation teams did about it: reinforced overnight surveillance, careful excavation of eggs within hours of laying to avoid harming the embryos, and coordination between hotel staff and conservation officials to keep nesting zones closed off until the transfer was finished each morning.
The eggs are now sitting in incubation corrals, and hatchlings are expected within 45 to 60 days depending on sand temperature. If the timing lines up, Médano Beach visitors could see a release in the coming weeks, since Pueblo Bonito's properties along the beach typically post release times through guest services once hatching begins.
The Bigger Number Behind the Anomaly
Médano's surprise nesting didn't happen in isolation. It's one data point inside a season that Pueblo Bonito Resorts, which has run a turtle protection and hatchling-release program along its Los Cabos beaches since 2003, is calling one of the strongest on record.
As of the resort group's most recent count in late August, the incubation corrals held 926 nests holding a combined 98,948 protected eggs. Of those, 86 nests had already hatched, releasing 7,780 hatchlings into the Sea of Cortez. Verónica Sánchez, the environmental scientist who coordinates the program, put the scale of the season plainly:
"The months of July, August and September correspond to the season's peak nesting period. During this time, favorable environmental conditions arise for the reproduction and nesting of sea turtles, making these months of intense work for the field technicians of the Sea Turtle Camp."
What separates this year from a routine peak season is the comparison against 2025. A few numbers worth sitting with:
- Nest counts are running 52.3 percent ahead of the same point last year, an increase of 318 nests.
- July alone brought 323 nests this season, compared to 192 in July 2025.
- In a separate count logged over three days this summer, Pueblo Bonito Resorts reported 105 nests representing 11,515 eggs at the stretch of Médano fronting its Pueblo Bonito Los Cabos and Rosé properties.
Put together, the anomaly at Médano wasn't a one-off. It's a visible piece of a town-wide surge that's still unfolding as September approaches, historically one of the season's busiest months for nesting.
What's Surfacing Farther Down the Coast
Turtles aren't the only reminder this August that the water off Cabo San Lucas has more going on beneath the surface than a typical summer. A team of divers working with Cabo Adventures recently encountered a group of sharks at depths exceeding 40 meters near El Arco, the rock formation that anchors nearly every postcard image of the town. Local reports described the animals as bull sharks, with the same accounts also referencing them as sand tiger sharks, spotted at a dive site divers know as "la pared," the wall.
Dive specialist Marco Belmar, who shared details of the encounter on the radio program Los Cabos a la Carta, described the sighting as extraordinary and noted the animals' size. "These majestic animals can measure up to five metres from nose to tail," he said. For a diving community that works those same waters through the summer, an encounter like that adds to a season where marine life has been showing up closer to shore and in bigger numbers than usual, whether that's turtles nesting where they don't usually nest or sharks turning up at a depth divers know well.
The Unglamorous Work Behind All of It
None of this happens on a beach that takes care of itself. A few miles down the Corridor at El Chileno, one of the area's most popular swimming beaches and a steady draw for visitor traffic year-round, municipal crews from Zofemat, the federal agency responsible for managing Mexico's maritime zone, pulled 125 kilograms, roughly 275 pounds, of recyclable plastic off the sand earlier this month. Zofemat director Héctor Hugo Agúndez Cota confirmed the material was entirely PET plastic, the kind used in single-use bottles, and has been set aside for recycling rather than landfill.
It's a smaller number than the turtle counts, but it's the same coastline doing double duty. PET plastic can linger in the environment for decades if it isn't collected, and sea turtles, along with dolphins and seabirds, can mistake plastic fragments for food, which leads to injury or worse. The record nesting season and the cleanup crews working a few beaches away aren't separate stories. One depends on the other. A summer this active for wildlife only holds up if the unglamorous work of clearing plastic off the sand keeps pace with it.
What This Looks Like If You're Walking These Beaches This Month
If you live near Médano or walk El Chileno regularly, late August and September are worth paying closer attention than usual. Marked nesting zones may still be roped off overnight in spots that never needed it before. Hotel guest services along Médano are the most reliable way to catch a release if timing works out. And if a nest turns up somewhere you weren't expecting one, the right move is the same one conservation officials keep asking for: don't approach, and let hotel security or local conservation contacts handle it. Sea turtles are a protected species in Mexico, and disturbing a nest carries real penalties.
This is what a lot of Cabo San Lucas's daily rhythm looks like right now, underneath the usual late-summer routines. The beach a lot of residents cross without a second thought turned into a working nursery for three nights, the season-wide numbers back up that it wasn't a fluke, and the cleanup crews down the coast are the reason any of it has a fighting chance to matter. Paying attention to that texture, not just the tourist version of the story, is part of what it means to actually live here.
If you're the kind of person who notices these details about the place you live, you're also the kind of person who eventually thinks about what that place is worth, or what it would take to plant roots somewhere else along this same coastline. When that day comes, Robyn & Co is happy to talk it through. Schedule a complimentary concierge consultation whenever you're ready.
