On this volunteer project, as well as doing jobs around the day such as beach clean ups, the main part of our work load is night time patrol and hatchery shifts. The group of us rotate around each night, with two taking a hatchery shift between 6pm and 12am, another two taking over from them for 12am to 6am and then another four volunteers walking on patrols from 7pm to 12am and 12am to 5am.
Patrols are genuinely quite exhausting as we spend about 3 of those 5 hours walking up and down the beach looking for black and leatherback turtles that may be nesting so we can measure, tag and grab the eggs to move them to the hatchery. I have been on one patrol already and not much happened, except for a temperamental black turtle searching for a place to nest, not finding one, crawling around for 3 hours and then going back to the ocean.
Last night/This morning, I was assigned a 12am to 5am patrol, and so I had planned on sleeping till 11pm before heading off. However, it soon became apparent that sleep was not going to happen – 13 baby leatherbacks had come up from there nest and we’re being released at 8.30.
So at 8.30 the group of us took to the beach to release these beautiful, endangered creatures. We released them in the soft sand and followed them down to the water. All the turtles made it and most importantly my turtle was first to the water! But it seriously was an amazing feeling to know that we were releasing these endangered creatures into the wild and infinitely improving there chance of survival!
Everyone was on a high at this point and many were returning home, completely speechless at what we had just experienced.
However, just minutes after returning to the hatchery, another nest of black turtles had hatched. 60 baby turtles had come to the surface and were itching to get to the ocean. Everyone was completely speechless – the leatherback nest was unexpected and two on the same night is almost unheard of. It was bordering on chaos because only a short way Up the beach the aforementioned black turtle had reappeared and was having her millionth attempt at nesting. She failed to nest again and then returned to the ocean. Whilst some attended to the adult black turtle, a group of us released the 60 baby black turtles into the ocean.
Completely exhausted at this point we made our way back to the hatchery, where, unbelievably, another 14 leatherback turtles from the first nest had emerged.
It was around 12pm and time for me to begin my 5 hour patrol shift. We planned to release the leatherbacks in a few hours time during the patrol. We walked to the end of the beach, where we rested and then headed back to the hatchery. On our way back we came across the same black turtle who had reemerged from the water and spent the next two hours trying to nest. Whilst some stayed with the temperamental turtle, a small group of us went to release the 14 remaining leatherbacks. It was incredibly difficult ensuring keeping track of all of them and making sure they made it into the ocean but they got there in the end!!
And because there hadn’t been enough excitement at this point, after 4 days and numerous attempts the black turtle finally started to nest. So we found ourselves playing midwives to the turtle, ready to grab the eggs and move them to the hatchery. In the hatchery we dug a hole in the sand an artificial nest and then I was allowed the intense job of placing the fragile eggs in their new nest. After the nest was sealed we continued with our patrol and I’m almost relieved to say that it was uneventful!!
It was an incredibly long night. I went 24 hours without sleeping, walked for kilometres up and down the beach and experienced sleeping whilst walking. But it was such amazing experience and so completely worth it! We experienced the full turtle circle of life, and it was something we will never forget.
Global Passenger 