It’s estimated that nearly 9 million hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) have been harvested for the tortoiseshell trade over the past 150 years. Despite being listed on CITES Appendix I, the hawksbill turtle trade continues, threatening the survival of this species. Here we present an overview of ShellBank, a World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) led initiative, aiming to enable scientists, conservationists and policy makers to track the illegal trade of hawksbill turtle products (“sale to source”) and to identify populations most at risk, along with improving training and capacity building amongst turtle range countries. One of the key components of ShellBank is to help coordinate the collection and the development of a standardised framework for biobanking biological reference material and DNA data for the use in conservation management programs, as well as intelligence collection and/or forensic investigation of the illegal trade of this species. This includes the development of three databases, a Rookery Baseline Database (nesting animals), an In-Water Database (foraging, stranded, by-catch animals) and a Confiscation Database (poached, traded animals and manufactured items). Under the umbrella of ShellBank, and supported by the Australian Government, between December 2020 – June 2021, the Surrender Your Shell (SYS) initiative was implemented in order to develop the Confiscation Database in Australia and pilot the useability of the current Rookery Baseline and In-Water Databases in identifying the source of traded items. It also aimed to create public awareness of the impact of illegal trade on hawksbill turtles. SYS encouraged members of the public to surrender tortoiseshell products without the risk of prosecution for any illegal items they owned. 328 individual items were surrendered. DNA was extracted and analysed from 69 items. Of the 62 identified as hawksbill turtle, 58% of haplotypes had been previously identified in nesting animals using ShellBank’s Rookery Database. The remaining had either been identified in foraging animals using the In-Water Database or were ‘orphan’ / new haplotypes that had not yet been encountered in either database to date. The next phase of ShellBank is to roll out the standardised framework for collection to law enforcement, forensic laboratories, and conservation researchers across the Asia-Pacific and beyond. This will continue to build a network of countries contributing to the development of ShellBank as a conservation management, wildlife forensic and law enforcement tool.