So you may have heard - Robin rescued a baby turtle. It seemed like one of those things that parents would pay money for to set up a "kid saving the turtle on a seemingly casual walk" experience, but no, this was just blind luck.
We got up a bit earlier than we needed to, around 5:45am, because Robert told us if we walked the beach when it opened to guest access at 6am, we had a chance to see mother turtles returning to the sea. When we got to the beach, all we saw initially were tractor marks in the sand everywhere - actually the telltale signs of a lot of mother turtle activity.
It was crazy how many tracks there were. We eagerly awaited the stats board to see how busy the island was last night. We started walking around the island on the beach as the sun rose and lit up the sky.
We looked around for any trace of living turtles. The only thing we saw initially was a foot long monitor lizard taking a morning dip. I love the way these things move - they seem so prehistoric.
Suddenly, Robin exclaimed that she saw a baby turtle in a hole about 8 inches deep in the sand. We took a look and it didn't appear to be moving. Robin said she saw it move, and then we saw it flap one of its little arms.
I told Robin she should pick it up and help it along. She reached down and gently picked it up - I reminded her to put it on the beach before the water so it could imprint on the beach.
As soon as Robin put it down, it scrambled quickly towards and into the water.
It swam away so fast that we almost forgot what had just happened - it was a little magical! We couldn't really explain how a rogue turtle could hatch outside the hatchery, but it does happen - a missed nesting, or an egg that wasn't collected during a nesting.... No matter - we had Robin Turtle Saver on hand!
When we made it back to the main building for (the shitty) breakfast, they had posted the stats for the night: 31 landings, 20 nestings, 1526 eggs laid and 111 turtles born.... Quite the production!
At 7:00am, it was our time to leave the island. The boat ride was bumpier than the way out, and it took twice as long, as one of the outboard motors was on the fritz... However, I'm not sure any of the kids noticed how long it took....
When we got back to the jetty, we said a tearful goodbye to the Versly family.... Wait, no, not this time... this was only the first, temporary goodbye. Team Versly is recuperating on a getaway island resort, while Team Tyndall will be chilling and hopefully getting some homework, blogs and vlogs done. We will resume our eightsome on Saturday when we head to Kota Kinabalu.
No comments:
Post a Comment