As part of my study abroad program we had a weekend-long trip to the Pacuare Reserve, a 6 Km stretch of beach and jungle dedicated to saving leatherback sea turtles.
These turtles are endangered, and only about 1 in 1000 of the eggs laid makes it to be an adult. On the reserve, they try to make sure as many eggs survive as possible. You'd think this would be easy...who would want turtle eggs? Well...poachers who can sell them as a delicacy, raccoons and larvae like to get at the eggs before they hatch, and crabs, seagulls, the sun, and sharks are waiting for the babies before they can make it to the ocean.
A mother sea turtle (who is giant...if you take a six foot tall man and imagine him with a giant shell, that's about what you're looking at) comes up on to the beach at night, digs a nest, lays about 60 eggs, covers them back up, and makes her way back to the sea. About two months later, the babies hatch, and instinctively know which way to dig themselves out of the nest (which is about 2 feet underground) and once in the open, make a beeline for the ocean. These guys can fit in the palm of your hand. No parent is there to protect them or help them on their journey, they just set out on their own from their first seconds of life.
This journey of about 30 feet can be one of the most dangerous things these babies do. Even a small stick in their way, or too deep of a footprint in the sand, can delay their trip to the ocean, and in those few seconds they can get snapped up by a crab, a seagull, or just get too hot to continue. Those that do make it, and survive a few decades in the ocean, come back to the SAME BEACH to lay their eggs about 25 years later.
So, volunteers at the preserve have a few jobs. All of which take place in all night beach patrols (going out in 4 hour shifts). The first job is to help study the turtles. Very little is known about what sea turtles do between being born and coming back to lay their eggs and why they choose the beaches they do, so any turtle sighting is immediately accompanied by a large number of measurements and tests to gather as much data as possible about the turtles. Second, is to protect the nests. When a mother turtle comes up to lay the nest, the volunteers make sure it is in a good location and make sure the tracks are hidden so that poachers can't come find the eggs the next day. Third, they make sure all of the hatchings go well. For this, volunteers clear out all the twigs and debris on the beach around the nest to make sure the baby turtles have a clear shot at the ocean. If the volunteers are actually there when the babies are born, they follow the baby turtles to the ocean, making sure their trip is as easy as possible. Finally, is the job of excavations. Once a nest is past it's hatching period, the nests get dug up to find out how many eggs hatched, and how many didn't, and if they didn't, why they didn't.
Amazingly, I got to participate in all of the above. We watched mother turtles come up onto the beach, watched babies break through the sand and find their way to the ocean, and I got to participate in an excavation where we actually found a few little turtles who hadn't made it out yet, and needed a little extra help. One of the mother turtles chose a poor location for her nest, in the middle of a bunch of plants, whose roots would have invaded the nest and killed the babies, so we had to move the nest! We took lots of measurements, found a new, safe location, and I got to dig the hole for the babies to live in, one that was as much like their mom's nest as possible.
I can't describe to you how powerful it is to watch nature at work, to watch these amazing creatures follow this invisible set of directions that they have from the moment they are born, and to get to participate, knowing that your work is allowing one more turtle to have a chance to survive. To know that those that do make it, will be back to the same place, to know the ones laying eggs now were born about the same time you were...it just made me remember how many incredible, wonderful things there are in the world, and how we don't make them happen, how we can only be thankful at the opportunity to participate. And if these little turtles that can fit in my hand can push on confidently with life, can follow a path that they don't know, but know they need to be on...I know I can do the same...
And so that y'all can have a taste of the experience, here's the beginning, middle, and end of one of our little turtle's journeys to the sea!
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| Breaking out of the nest |
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| See that nice clear path we made for him...and that's the sun rising, not setting |
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| Here you can see his little tracks as he gets swept up in the waves and off into the ocean! |
