I’m a Turtle Whisperer

I think that these turtles here have a gravitational pull towards me because every turtle walk I’m on I strike gold. Last night was turtle mayhem from the hours of 11pm-2:30am. I took off on my turtle walk with Adam, a staff member here, and Giulia, a diver who just got here last week. Within 15 minutes we stumbled upon a set of turtles tracks leading up the beach, only to find a mama turtle digging for a safe spot to lay her eggs. Adam told us she looked like she would be a while, so we walked further down the beach to find another set of tracks. Adam said these must be from the same turtle, assuming the mom didn’t like the spot and retreated back into the water to find another spot. We took a few more steps only to find another turtle digging to lay. These two turtles were probably only 30 yards from each other in almost the exact stage of the birthing process.

Adam took the lead assigning us tasks to try to organize the situation so that we could collect the eggs from each turtle in a timely manner. Some turtle birthing facts I picked up in the process:

-Female turtles can spend hours on the beach laying their eggs. They often try out a few spots, create fake holes to make diversions for predators, or may spend a lot of time digging what they think is the perfect nest, and also digging to cover up that nest once they are finished

-Mother turtles typically lay 60-80 eggs at once, but can lay over 100. When laying, the turtle enters a trance-like state where she does not notice anything going on around her

-You can tell that a turtle is ready to lay when she stops digging with all four flippers and is just digging with her back flippers. She uses the back flippers to scoop the sand and create a deep funnel for the eggs to drop into

We ran back and forth in between the two turtles trying to figure out who would lay first. We returned to turtle #1 to find that she had already started laying, so we marked the spot with a stick to be sure we could find it after she buried it and returned to turtle #2. We got to her right as she started laying and sat there for almost 45 minutes as she laid 78 eggs. I now understand why people say child birth is amazing, because I couldn’t look away from this turtle even with whatever goop was falling out of her. Haven’t seen a human being born but I have to say a turtle birth is pretty awesome. After popping out all of those eggs this turtle suddenly started back finning us with sand right to the face as she started covering up her eggs. A science officer collected the eggs before they were buried, and we returned to turtle #1 for her eggs. She laid 88, leaving the night’s total at 166 eggs.

We brought the eggs to the hatchery on the island and had them buried for safe keeping until they are ready to hatch in 7-8 weeks. I didn’t get back to camp until after 2am and was completely covered in sand and sweating, but it was all worth it. I thought I had seen it all with the baby turtle releases, but I would have to say this night topped that. Pom Pom, if you want to find more turtles just put me on the walk, I think I’m a good luck charm.