THE HAPPENING

As most of you probably know from Facebook, the hatchlings arrived last night. It was an amazing experience. I have no pictures because hatchlings are extremely sensitive to light, so the area had to be completely dark except for one red light. This made it very difficult to see anything so instead of looking for hatchlings, I just looked for dark moving spots.

Our team of volunteers saved several of the hatchlings from the crabs roaming the beach. (Unfortunately, a crab did pluck the eyes out of a hatchling and run off, so we lost that one.) Many hatchlings became disoriented and tried to go the wrong way, but we guided them to the ocean. Several fell into holes but we picked them out. Many flipped over on their backs and we turned them right side up. In short, if we hadn't been there, who knows how many of the 217 babies would have been lost.

Human intervention can be a good thing!!

The first sign of a nest beginning to hatch is a depression in the sand. This is caused by the sand falling between cracks as the eggs begin to break. The depression gets larger and larger, until tiny heads emerge from the sand. This process can take between 1 and 6 hours. Last night, the depression started at 8:30, and the first turtle popped out around 10:30.

The first three were very fast and headed straight for the ocean with no trouble. Then there was a wave of about 40 hatchlings, a later wave of about 100, and a still later wave of about 40 more. There were also smaller groups in between.

As the hatchlings crawled out of the nest, we all got on our hands and knees and followed them to make sure that they didn't fall in holes, get taken away by crabs, or turn around and go the wrong way. I saw a video on YouTube once of a nest hatching, and all the turtles knew exactly which way to go. This was not the case with this nest. A lot of the turtles, especially the ones that I guarded, kept trying to go back towards the nest. They would seriously turn around and march back uphill, even though their instinct is supposed to be telling them to go downhill. I asked Luke (head of the nest watch program) why this was happening, and he said that some hatchlings have a better sense of direction than others.

It probably took at least an hour for me to get my first hatchling to the water. He kept turning around and I kept having to make barriers in the sand to try and get him to go the right way. He would even try and climb up over the barriers that I made. Even when we got to the steepest part of the downhill slope, he continued trying to go uphill. The poor little turtle was so tired. He had started out strong, but used so much energy trying to turn around and go the wrong way that now he could only go a few inches before he had to stop and rest.  It took everything I had in me not to pick him up and take him to the water's edge.

Finally when we made it to the wet sand, he started going towards the water. I was relieved. But then of course as soon as I stood up he turned right back around.

Seriously?!

The waves were incredibly loud. I could feel the ocean spray on my face as it crashed into the shore. The little turtle still wanted to go the wrong way. I was very concerned because he seemed to lack all the basic instincts necessary to get to the water. Without my intervention, he would have certainly ended up in the brush by now and been eaten by a mongoose or some such creature.

I got back down on my knees and used my hands to form a barrier, hoping to force him to turn towards the ocean. It worked. I continued following with my hands directly behind him, close but not touching.

Suddenly warm water washed over my hands, and the hatchling was gone.

That was a magical moment. There aren't words to describe how I felt, and if there are, I don't know them. I think "elated" is the closest I can come. I stood, staring at the water for a moment, before I remembered that there was more to do.

All night we guided hatchlings to the ocean. Some of them went straight for it, others had trouble. At the end we used red lights to search the beach and found a few stragglers. We then took shifts and watched the nest for more stragglers. Four struggled out of the sand last night ( and another four this morning after we had left).

After most everyone had gone to sleep and three of us had seen the last turtle to the water, we stood quietly on the shore for a few minutes. The stars were thick and bright, the waves crashed, warm sea foam washed over our toes, and together we said a prayer for the safety of the hatchlings.

Maybe a few of them will survive, and in 20 years, one will come back to this same beach to lay her own nests.

Camping again tonight just in case there are a few more babies...