Night 1 or I Am Not a Turtle Virgin

June 21, 2010 - first night on the beach

Tonight we piled into the paddywagon at seven with all of our gear: long shirts, long pants, hiking shoes, head lamps, mosquito repellant, water, rain gear, etc...



The twenty minute ride through the jungle to the beach is different in the dark, when unfamiliar sounds from frogs and other night dwellers fill the air.

When we arrived at the base shelter on the beach, Ronald, our guide and trainer for the evening, showed us the tagging instruments. The first and most critical is the PIT tag, which gets injected into the turtle's meaty shoulder like a pet microchip. The PIT tags allow the researchers to see if a turtle is returning to the same beach every 2-3 years when she nests. One of ours has ended up in Florida before.

The other kind of tag is the flipper tags. These are a little mean looking, and I cringed at the thought of putting them on the sweet giants. They are metal tags which bite into the fleshy area between the tail and the back flipper when you clamp them with a rather medieval looking metal clamp. It's like a livestock tag in the ear. It pierces the flesh and contains an ID number and the address of Nature Seekers here in Trinidad. It's like tagging the webbed skin between your fingers. OUCH! But they do provide information. Three of our turtles ended up in fishing nets in the Mediterranean. The fishermen had the presence of mind to report it and let at least one of them go. It took a year for the information to get back to Nature Seekers and when they finally got the information on the sighting, the same turtle was back on Matura Beach nesting that year.

We can only tag her when she is actually laying the eggs, not during any other part of her elaborate nesting ritual. And in addition to the tags, we are outfitted with scanners (for scanning for earlier PIT tags), GPS, measuring tape for measuring the carapace (shell), record sheets and pencils.

All during the 45 minute talk, my anticipation was mounting. We were all chomping to get on the beach, behold our first turtle. Finally we turned down the sandy path to the shoreline, turning our head lamps off. The night air was still and dense, and there was no relieving breeze on the beach either. We turned parallel to the shore and began our patrol and there she was! A huge, primeval, ancient dinosaur, an enormous black mound in the sand. A thrill of child wonder ran through me. She was already deep into her ritual.







She uses her front flippers to do what is called "body pitting." She clears away the surface sand and sinks her belly further into the sand below, feeling for temperature (cooler temperatures mean more male hatchlings, warmer sand yields more female hatchlings). She is deciding if she likes the spot she's chosen. If she doesn't, she'll move around until she finds one more to her liking. If that does not work, she'll heave herself a few yards away and try again. If nothing at all is to her liking, she'll abandon and return to the sea without laying, hopefully to try again later.

But this one liked her spot enough to start digging. The is an astonishingly choreographed dance which she cannot see at all, because it is all done with her back flippers. First she balances her body by anchoring her front flippers deep in the sand. Using one massive flipper at a time, say, her left, she shovels out a scoop of sand by curling her flipper in on itself, then she lifts the left flipper out of the hole and traps the sand on the bank above the hole. Then she scoops with the right flipper. Then, before she can scoop again with her left, she flings the sand she trapped from the last scoop out of the nest altogether. You do not want to be in the line of fire when she is doing this, because you will be wearing, eating and seeing sand.

I moved from her rear to her head, watching her in amazement, marvelling at the tremendous effort this mother was giving. You can see, feel the the exhaustion. To come out of the sea, where your entire body weight is supported by salt water, to heave your giant body onto the beach, heave it up the shore, shovel sand to find a suitable spot, dig a hole 3.5 feet deep entirely with your back feet (imagine digging a perfect hole you cannot see entirely with your feet!), lay 75-100 eggs, cover the nest, camouflage it, and return to the sea. A process which can take up to two hours. You cannot help but be in awe of this act of determined creation.

She let out a gasp, exhaling and then drawing in another breath. I gasped with her. Thick, mucousy salt tears ran from the eyes of this sacred mother. I sat in front of her on my knees, encouraging her (more for me than for her). I cried to meet her. How beautiful, powerful is the spirit of nature.



When she began laying her clutch I volunteered to be the first to flipper tag her. I moved into a comfortable position behind her. Ronald held her flipper for me so I could find the right fleshy spot, I positioned the clamp, squeezed my eyes shut, apologized to her, and sqeezed the clamp with all my might (you don't want to be timid, timid squeezing means that the tag won't bite all the way through the flesh and clasp shut, and you'll end up hurting the turtle more, perhaps wounding her, causing an infection). When I opened my eyes, Ronald pronounced my tagging to be very good. A huge relief.



Throughout the course of the night, we tagged two more new turtles, and recorded two returns.



And then, we rescued four babies! Ronald found one on his (or her - you can't tell) back. We revived him and sent him on his way to the sea, where, if he is a he, he will never again return to shore, and if he is a she, she will return if she lives to 25 or 30, and is old enough to start nesting. Then we found three more stragglers who didn't make it out of the nest. Sometimes, if they are unlucky enough to be from eggs that are on the bottom of the clutch, and after 70 of your brothers and sisters have stood on your head to get out of the nest, you don't have much of a shot, you are, in effect, a snack for something else in the circle of life. The guide pulled the three from the nest, and we carried them to the shore where they did not show much life. One wiggled a little, and started to wobble toward the surf, but the other two did not revive enough to crawl home. We had to leave them and move on, hoping that with enough rest they might live. A heartbreak and a hope carrying me home that night.