Despite long, thick flippers heaving deep impressions in the sand, the metre-long Green Turtle before me, wheeled around like a great artillery gun. It was not this mother’s night to leave her young with the 1816 eggs laid on Seligan Island in just 12 hours.
The Mother
We finally reached the mother who had begun to lay. She was carefully protected from sighting us so as not to be worried, but something was not right. Like some automaton on a prehistory tour her Triassic design, her precise repetitions, the whole setup just did not seem real.
Seeing her face changed that. Her important work complete, we were allowed to see her at rest. The tears in her eyes, though we knew were her normal glands at work, brought her instantly to life. The ranger scrubbed the sand from her back and she looked at us without concern. Perhaps she would return again many years later, but tonight her job was done.
Chance Encounter
Earlier in the day I’d levered my sunburnt body off the driftwood lounger and made my way sleepily over the hot, pitted sand.
My foot was aiming for the last pit by a massive palm, but stopped suddenly when I spotted a tiny clockwork turtle. A boy I imagined because of sheer pigheaded determination to be out ahead of the 30 siblings behind him.
The years he spent carried by his mother had wound his spring so tight. The magnetic crystals inside her head had guided her home to where she herself had made this same dash maybe 30 years ago. Now with four flippers frantically spinning, her son would hurdle dunes and rocks twice his size to reach the alluring ocean.
A gentle wave engulfed him, his first taste of salt. A great blue expanse opened up and his flippers eased to a glide.
Only mothers would return here so for the islanders there was little left than to watch his little head bobbing up a few more times for air. To watch and to hope that before his spring wound down, the yolk in his belly dry, he’d find some safety like so few of them would.
Hope
We witnessed another 40 or 50 released by the rangers that night. Some got confused and headed landward. Some would feed other animals in the sea. Some would succumb to our plastic and our nets. One never left the beach.
But over 2000 eggs had hatched that night from 26 nests. Around 4500 nests had been rescued in the year so far on just one island. If just 1 or 2 percent of the eggs in those nests make it, that’s 3-6 thousand Green and Hawksbill turtles out there. Their thick leather-like flippers effortlessly impelling them toward a sedentary and peaceful life.
