This shows a female Hawksbill turtle, laying her eggs after having struggled up the beach to dig out her nest. The female turtle digs a hole around herself by scooping away the dry sand with her front flippers. She uses the back flippers to dig into the damp sand below to form a vertical tunnel, the egg chamber. The number of eggs laid, is generally between 100-200. She covers them up then crawls back to the water but will return to lay another clutch of eggs, after a period of about two weeks. The eggs, incubate in the sand for seven to twelve weeks before hatching. The temperature of the sand, around the eggs, determines the sex of the hatchlings. While warm sand produces mostly females, cool sand temperatures produce mainly male hatchlings. Females lay more than one clutch in a season and they usually come back to the same beach to lay. Turtles lay eggs every 2-3 years.

On this stamp, a group of Baby Hawksbill turtles can be seen emerging from the nest, and scrambling towards the sea. Birds and other predators, such as crabs, eat a few of the young turtles, but once they reach the reef flat many of the hatchlings are prey to fish or sharks. It is hard to tell the sex of a small turtle just by looking at it. Once a turtle becomes an adult, a male can be identified by its long tail and long claws on the front of the flippers. An adult female is believed to be 20-50 years old before she can lay eggs.

This stamp features a stage in the turtle's life cycle that very little is known about. After leaving the nest and entering the ocean, turtles are seldom seen until many years later. Those hatchlings, which survive to cross the reef, swim until they reach deep water where ocean currents help the turtles drift for the first few years. Turtles are rarely seen again until their carapace is 35-40cm long when they move to live and feed in shallow waters.

The highest value, the F$2.00 stamp, shows the results of many years of seclusion and a life fraught with danger. Once mature, adult male and female turtles migrate from feeding grounds to nesting beaches, where mating takes place in the shallow waters. After mating, the males return to the feeding grounds, while the females stay near the nesting beaches, where a month later she clambers out of the sea and up to the beach to lay her eggs. The long-term survival of this species is dependent on how many adult (egg producing) turtles we allow to reproduce.