Turtle Walk

(Photo by @davideriaud)

This weekend I was scheduled for my first turtle walk on Pom Pom. Each night at 11pm, a group of three walks a lap around the island in search of turtle tracks. Turtles lay their eggs at night, so doing the walk at this time is most likely to increase chances of finding eggs. If you see tracks on the beach, you search for the turtle and sit and wait as she lays her eggs. This can take quite a few hours, as she lays hundreds of eggs at once and buries them afterwards. Once she has returned to the sea, you notify a science officer back at camp, who then comes and collects the eggs to take to the turtle sanctuary on the island.

At first I felt bad about this, thinking “wait we’re just taking all of the mother turtle’s eggs from her spot in the sand?!” But I was told that turtles never return to the eggs, and once they lay them their job is done. We remove the eggs from the beach because there are poachers that visit the island and dig them up to sell them, as people actually purchase them for food. Though a turtle is found only every three to four weeks, we do the walk every night in the hope that we find the eggs first.

We didn’t find any tracks on my walk, as 107 eggs were found just a few nights before. The sanctuary notifies us when there will be a hatching, so I’m hoping to see one soon. Only one out of one thousand turtles makes it to adulthood, with portions of them never even touching the sea when they are released due to being eaten by birds and other animals. With these numbers in mind, I hope this small efforts gives a few more of those little guys a chance. Fin, noggin, duuuuude 🤘🏼