Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Day 3 or Proud Mama

June 21, 2010

Last night at the airport, waiting for the rendezvous of Earthwatch volunteers, I made one last ditch effort to recover my rain jacket. I thought if I could just find some American Airlines people to talk to, maybe they would have a lost and found or something. But when airline workers don't want to be found, I think they disappear in to some kind of cosmic worm hole. So no more rain jacket.

We assembled slowly. Me, sharp as a tac Alice and her cherubic 16 year old granddaughter, 18 year old Sims who wants to study marine biology in college and is here for a graduation gift, Mary from England, and then a contingent of Europeans from the European Environment Agency (basically the European Equivalent of our EPA, only a lot smaller). Their director is sending them all on this trip for biodiversity training. So there is Linda, a Brit, Gerard and Josienne, French, Stephan, the German, Cigdem (pronounced CHEE-dum) from Turkey, Anita from Slovenia and Tarja from Finland, or as she says, "Feeenlund." We introduced ourselves and stood around awkwardly until our driver came and hauled us out to Matura, the village we are staying in for the research project. As we loaded ourselves and our luggage onto the minibus, the air was thick with a sense of adventure and anticipation. Linda and I sat next to each other and quickly discovered we were kindred spirits on the Cosmic Consciousness front, and that conversation kept us busy until we pulled in front of our guest house an hour later.

We were greeted with room temperature butter and garlic sandwiches (things that make you go "hmmm....") and some juice, and then packed off to bed. But not before the roomate haggling was settled. Immediately a persnickety few were angling for a different room assignment, but the very big upshot is that I got to room with Linda, my cool new Brit friend who hails from the town that made Newcastle Brown Ale. She has scored mega cool points because of the brew alone, not to mention the fact that we shared similar backgrounds and beliefs when it came to men, the Buddha, and living as a single woman.

It is critical to mention that there is no airconditioning in our guest house except for window airconditioners in the bedrooms, which is itself a massive relief, but means you often retreat to your bedroom in self defense from melting. To wake up is to start sweating. To step out of the shower is to start sweating. Yes, I know this is the tropics, but damn it is fucking hot. I'm not sure fucking hot even really covers it. Muggy, soggy, sticky, clammy, butt-crack moist, all might be understatements when it comes to the Caribbean during rainy season. It rained all last night again, and while I loved listening to the sound of it during the night, it left behind a steam bath of a morning. Imagine if you were a fly stuck between two hairy, sweaty donkey balls and you could not escape. That is about how hot and sticky it is here.

But there is not much time to be miserable here. Shortly after an...interesting... breakfast of salt fish (which is really salt with a little fish thrown in), curried green beans and some spinach schmoo, we had orientation. Dennis, the director of Nature Seekers came over from the headquarters (right next door) to welcome us and familiarize us with the basics: "ask for what you need, we are here to help you, we have lots of turtles, etc."

Next up was the beach orientation. We needed to see where we'd be working at night on the turtle patrols. So we all piled into the back of the truck (which looks like a paddy wagon with us all being hauled off to someplace unpleasant).



The drive to the beach is a bumpy 20 minutes over puddles and dirt and gravel roads, past the hodge podge houses of locals, mongrels and their pups running in the streets. Then the village houses dropped away and we reach the jungle's edge. Hoping down from the truck bed we headed eagerly in the direction of the shoreline.





Um, remember the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks? Yeah, that's where I am working. The isolation of this beach (it is restricted because of the turtles), the Atlantic ocean crashing on the shore, the line of palm trees and sea grapes inland, the bird of paradise flowers growing wild, the fallen coconuts littering the ground, the bits of lonely driftwood stranded on the shore drying in the sun, all meld into tropical perfection. Straight out of a Hollywood movie. I am a lucky bastard.





And then it happened, my first turtle. Just moments after we hit the beach, Sims spotted a baby turtle in the sand, lying on his back. At first glance I was prepared for tragedy; he did not look alive. But our guide, Richard, touched him and he moved a flipper! The little guy was still hanging on! Richard instructed us to get him wet in the ocean to cool him off a little, and to carry him with us during our tour of the beach, stroking him along the back of his cute little shell the whole way.





So we took turns carrying him, petting him, falling in love with him. Sims named him Ulysses. He was no more than four inches long, with a flipper span of four inches. His soft shell was soft black leather, his flippers mottled with white spots, his little head the cutest baby turtle head I have ever seen. (OK, this is the only baby turtle head I've see). People, baby turtles are fucking adorable.





With Ulysses in hand, we started our walk of the 8km beach, noting the different zones that have been set up for patrols, noting the beach erosion from the rain, noting the bites we were getting all over everywhere from some kind of sand fly, or sand flea, or sand fuckers more like.

I wish I could say the beach was pristine, but heartbreakingly, it is not. The trash and litter from oceans away, from cruise ships, from other countries, from the great swirl of trash in the Atlantic washes up on Matura Beach daily.



And from Trinidad itself, heavy rains flush the rivers of plastic bottles, glass bottles, plastic bags, pen caps, cigarette lighters, make up jars, fishing line, fishing nets, styrofoam, candy wrappers, unidentifiable bits of crap that does not belong in nature. My heart sank when I saw the piles of it, washed up on shore and regurgitated by the sea, as if to say, "I don't want this in me, you take it back."



Every February, before nesting season, the Matura community comes to the beach and cleans it, removes the trash and natural debris, anything that can get in the way of the turtles coming to nest. But as soon as it is clear, the trash starts coming in again, and it is more than the small staff at Nature Seekers can keep up with. It is beyond frustrating. All one can do is hope that one day we will all realize that what we do in one part of the world affects another. Does the person on that cruise ship who threw his coke bottle into the sea realize it may wash ashore in Trinidad and pollute the beaches that a critically endangered sea turtle comes to nest? Do I realize that everytime I buy a bottle of water, I create a new piece of trash? When we don't see the affects of our actions on a daily basis, we are not careful, caring, contientious. We must, for our own sakes, we must change. I am vowing to do my best never to buy another plastic bottle again, even if I recycle it.



When we had returned to the entrance to the beach, it was time to put Ulysses in the sand and send him off to join the real world. We put him down facing the ocean.



We watched him wander around a little at first, turn the wrong direction. We cheered him on and encouraged him to right his course toward the sea. He did, and his little flippers worked to carrying him home to water, to his life where he has a one in one thousand chance of survival.



I have to say, sending a baby sea turtle off to the ocean is a bit like sending your first born off to kindergarten. You stand there with pride watching him or her (Ulysses could be a girl) and you call out, "Bye cutie, have a gread day, don't get eaten!" I feel like a proud mama.

No comments:

Patrol Night 2 or I Have Turtle Blood on My Hands

June 22, 2010 Tonight I am on the beach writing by the gibbous moonlight. The Atlantic is beating a persistent time, the stars sparkle, the ...