The trip to Turtle Island was about 1 hour on the boat. The island itself is pretty small, but along with two other nearby islands, is part of a national park focused on turtle breeding grounds.
There are beautiful sandy beaches around most of the island with (excitingly) turtle tracks on several of them! I went for a walk around the island and saw a nice variety of wildlife even though the island is small, including Badge Rail, monitor lizards, other lizards, Brahminy kites, white collared kingfishers, yellow vented bulbul and a brown or copper throated sunbird.
Next exciting-ness was the sunset behind the thunderhead clouds. It was truly stunning and gobsmacking. The colours that were created in the edges of the cloud were amazing and I hope when I eventually get a good look at the Northern Lights that it's at least somewhat similarly gorgeous.
Another amazing thing was behind us, and we didn't notice it for a while. Half of the sky was a different colour and, after a bit of consternation, we worked out that the cause was the shadow cast by the cloud on the opposite horizon!
Anyway - enough about anything non-turtle and on to everything TURTLE!!!
While we were watching the sunset we did see 2 turtles in the water, one apparently giving a piggy back to another one. I cannot imagine what they could have been up to.
The rangers on the island have been studying and helping turtles since 1927. What they do is this (and don't get upset about it till I've finished explaining why!):
The rangers watch the beaches every night, and after a mother turtle has to dug her nest and laying eggs she drops into a kind of trance. At this point the rangers move in and take all of the eggs she lays out of the nest, basically as she is laying. (I told you - don't get upset). As she is in a trance, she doesn't notice or mind this interference, as long as they rangers don't accidentally touch her tail. Flippers are OK, and they often have to move her flippers out of the way to get to the eggs, but if they touch her tail she will wake out of the trance and stop laying. The eggs are then promptly (within 15 mins) transported to the hatchery and buried in a marked nest.
Moving the eggs immediately, before they have been buried by the mother, is the best way for a couple of reasons.
- You can be sure to get all of the eggs
- You won't damage them digging them up
- They haven't 'settled' yet. The eggs need to stay the same way up and not moving after they have started developing or it will cause problems.
But why move them to a hatchery at all I hear you cry. It's not natural! Well, there are many reasons!
- The hatchery is fenced off and monitored. This protects the eggs from predators such as monitor lizards, rats and humans (turtle eggs have 10x the protien of a chicken egg, and are sought after in places like the Phillipines)
- The hatchery is off the beach, meaning that other mother turtles won't accidentally dig up and destroy another nest.
- Having all the island's eggs in one place makes it easier to observe/count/catch/release the babies when they hatch.
- The rangers can dig the hatchery nests in a sunny spot or the shade, to ensure a good mix of genders of the hatchlings.
Statistics from their research suggest that the per-egg survival-to-hatching rate increases from around 50% in a 'natural' nest, to over 95% in the hatchery. Baby turtles have a low enough survival rate (<10%) after they have hatched that the rangers are very happy to be doing anything to increase the numbers out there.
The rangers only allow tourists to watch (and potentially disturb) a single laying and only a small number of the hatchlings released, and if none hatch, or none come ashore to lay, we see nothing. We were told that our chances of seeing both of these events was up at 99% though.
Our night on the island started with a terrific thunderstorm, and this did apparently scare some of the turtles off. The rangers noticed several that came up the beach during the storm but were disturbed by the lightning and did not nest (just as well really as it wouldn't have been nice watching the laying in the bucketing rain!).
Later in the evening after the storm we were able to go along for the release of a small number of baby turtles that had hatched that night in the hatchery. It was great to see the tiny little flippery buggers heading madly for the sea, though in the light of only 1 ranger's torch, not easy to get any decent photos.
Even with 20 people there, watching them being released only a few meters from the waters edge, we did find one little bugger behind us, up the beach, flipped over on his back. Their navigation system to get them into the water from the nest really isn't that sophisticated, so that's another reason for the rangers to help out with the release rather than leave it totally to nature, and why tourists are only allowed to see the release of 15. If we had been there when they release all 100 or so that hatched that night I'm sure some would have been stood on!
As soon as that was over the 'TURTLE' shout went up, and we all rushed to the other side of the island to see a huge mother green turtle laying her eggs. By the time we got there she was already in her trance and did not appear to notice us, or the ranger removing the eggs, at all. When she was done and had filled in the (now empty) nest, the rangers checked her tags, measured her, and left her to make her way back to the sea to potentially mate again and lay more! (Turtles when breeding can lay up to 4 nests a season, but only breed every other year)
By then it was almost midnight, and after a quick stop to see the eggs being buried in the hatchery it was way past bedtime! Next morning I took a quick trip to the beaches before we left and saw the huge number of fresh turtle tracks up and down the beach. Was a really lovely feeling to see there having been that much activity the night before!
There are beautiful sandy beaches around most of the island with (excitingly) turtle tracks on several of them! I went for a walk around the island and saw a nice variety of wildlife even though the island is small, including Badge Rail, monitor lizards, other lizards, Brahminy kites, white collared kingfishers, yellow vented bulbul and a brown or copper throated sunbird.
Next exciting-ness was the sunset behind the thunderhead clouds. It was truly stunning and gobsmacking. The colours that were created in the edges of the cloud were amazing and I hope when I eventually get a good look at the Northern Lights that it's at least somewhat similarly gorgeous.
Another amazing thing was behind us, and we didn't notice it for a while. Half of the sky was a different colour and, after a bit of consternation, we worked out that the cause was the shadow cast by the cloud on the opposite horizon!
Anyway - enough about anything non-turtle and on to everything TURTLE!!!
While we were watching the sunset we did see 2 turtles in the water, one apparently giving a piggy back to another one. I cannot imagine what they could have been up to.
The rangers on the island have been studying and helping turtles since 1927. What they do is this (and don't get upset about it till I've finished explaining why!):
The rangers watch the beaches every night, and after a mother turtle has to dug her nest and laying eggs she drops into a kind of trance. At this point the rangers move in and take all of the eggs she lays out of the nest, basically as she is laying. (I told you - don't get upset). As she is in a trance, she doesn't notice or mind this interference, as long as they rangers don't accidentally touch her tail. Flippers are OK, and they often have to move her flippers out of the way to get to the eggs, but if they touch her tail she will wake out of the trance and stop laying. The eggs are then promptly (within 15 mins) transported to the hatchery and buried in a marked nest.
Moving the eggs immediately, before they have been buried by the mother, is the best way for a couple of reasons.
- You can be sure to get all of the eggs
- You won't damage them digging them up
- They haven't 'settled' yet. The eggs need to stay the same way up and not moving after they have started developing or it will cause problems.
But why move them to a hatchery at all I hear you cry. It's not natural! Well, there are many reasons!
- The hatchery is fenced off and monitored. This protects the eggs from predators such as monitor lizards, rats and humans (turtle eggs have 10x the protien of a chicken egg, and are sought after in places like the Phillipines)
- The hatchery is off the beach, meaning that other mother turtles won't accidentally dig up and destroy another nest.
- Having all the island's eggs in one place makes it easier to observe/count/catch/release the babies when they hatch.
- The rangers can dig the hatchery nests in a sunny spot or the shade, to ensure a good mix of genders of the hatchlings.
Statistics from their research suggest that the per-egg survival-to-hatching rate increases from around 50% in a 'natural' nest, to over 95% in the hatchery. Baby turtles have a low enough survival rate (<10%) after they have hatched that the rangers are very happy to be doing anything to increase the numbers out there.
The rangers only allow tourists to watch (and potentially disturb) a single laying and only a small number of the hatchlings released, and if none hatch, or none come ashore to lay, we see nothing. We were told that our chances of seeing both of these events was up at 99% though.
Our night on the island started with a terrific thunderstorm, and this did apparently scare some of the turtles off. The rangers noticed several that came up the beach during the storm but were disturbed by the lightning and did not nest (just as well really as it wouldn't have been nice watching the laying in the bucketing rain!).
Later in the evening after the storm we were able to go along for the release of a small number of baby turtles that had hatched that night in the hatchery. It was great to see the tiny little flippery buggers heading madly for the sea, though in the light of only 1 ranger's torch, not easy to get any decent photos.
Even with 20 people there, watching them being released only a few meters from the waters edge, we did find one little bugger behind us, up the beach, flipped over on his back. Their navigation system to get them into the water from the nest really isn't that sophisticated, so that's another reason for the rangers to help out with the release rather than leave it totally to nature, and why tourists are only allowed to see the release of 15. If we had been there when they release all 100 or so that hatched that night I'm sure some would have been stood on!
As soon as that was over the 'TURTLE' shout went up, and we all rushed to the other side of the island to see a huge mother green turtle laying her eggs. By the time we got there she was already in her trance and did not appear to notice us, or the ranger removing the eggs, at all. When she was done and had filled in the (now empty) nest, the rangers checked her tags, measured her, and left her to make her way back to the sea to potentially mate again and lay more! (Turtles when breeding can lay up to 4 nests a season, but only breed every other year)
By then it was almost midnight, and after a quick stop to see the eggs being buried in the hatchery it was way past bedtime! Next morning I took a quick trip to the beaches before we left and saw the huge number of fresh turtle tracks up and down the beach. Was a really lovely feeling to see there having been that much activity the night before!
Magic!!!
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