Turtle Power

Chaser 2
Yvonne Chapman
Wed 11 Jul 2007 15:29
This is a good one.  Jesse James, a local Trinidadian has his own business in the Chaguaramas area serving only the cruisers. He offers taxi rides, shopping trips, island tours, turtle watching trips etc. He operates under the name of Members Only, and is available only to non-members via channel 68 on the VHF. i.e. there is no membership, that's just his business name. He has a good reputation and recommended by locals and cruisers alike.
 
Yvonne and I wanted to see the giant leatherback turtles, we tried in Tobago with Susie and Billy but they didn't appear.  We booked a trip with Jesse, there were ten people on the trip and he picked us all up from our various Marinas at 1700hrs. The drive to Matura beach is about two and a half hours each way, it's on the otherside of Trinidad and the roads are a little windy and bumpy. Jesse is a great guide too, non stop talking, explaining all the points of interest and history along the way. Just outside a village named (appropriately enough for us) Valencia, he stopped at a Chinese Restaurant for us all to graze on a very good chicken meal and a drink, which also gave us time to chat to the other cruisers in the bus. After our fill, back in the minibus, we drove on to Matura Beach well known for its Turtle invasion during the March to August season. 
 
On our arrival we were met by a guide, this is quite a controlled environment, nobody is permitted on the beach, day or night during turtle season without a permit that you must prearrange. Anton, our guide explained the do's and don'ts on the beach, and most people respected his authority. Cameras, flashes, torches must not be used at any time other than when the guide gives his permission.
 
As we arrived on the beach a giant Leatherback turtle arrived  as if she timed her visit for us. The waves were big and it was a dark but clear night. We could see her  silhouette struggling out of the surf, and slowly clawed her way up the soft sand of the beach. Any lights or flashes now could make her turn back to the Ocean in search for another site, so we all stood still waiting for a to choose her nesting site. With her giant flippers she clawed her way towards us, in fact we had to move back because she kept on coming, waiting to sense the correct site to lay her eggs.  She is looking for sand soft enough to dig, warm enough to incubate the eggs and far enough from the high water line. The sand is cooler nearer the high-water line and warmer nearer the vegetation, this decides the sex of the babies. In the cooler sand the babies tend to be male and the warmer sand female. 
 
Our turtle clawed her way forward, groaning as she did so until she found her spot.  She then makes a nest scraping away the soft sand until her body is down on firm sand, she then throws some sand over her body so as to camouflage herself as much as possible. With her large back flippers she starts to dig, as much as 2 feet deep depending on the size of her flippers, but as far down as she can reach. Each slow deliberate move scoops out sand and at the same time moves her flipper in a circular motion to try and make the wall of the hole firm so as to avoid caving in. When the hole is deep enough she then widens the bottom of it so the eggs when laid are not all on top of each other filling the egg nest to the top.
 
The process of excavation can take a long time maybe an hour if the sand is too soft or a child kicks some sand back in the hole.  In fact our turtle couldn't find good sand, it was too soft, and under the weight of her giant body, maybe 1000lbs, the sand kept falling back into the pit, despite attempts by our guide and Jesse to help her dig. She therefore aborted that attempt, struggled back up, covering the hole before moving on to find another location. Only a couple of metres away she tried again, and this time was successful. Our turtle then stopped moving, she enters almost trance like condition whilst laying her eggs (up to one hundred). At this time we are allowed to take photos and moved around to her head. She looks to being crying as she lay there depositing her eggs into the nest, she groans and breathes heavily until egg laying is over until the next time. During the season, she'll return to that beach perhaps six or seven times to lay  a hundred or more eggs, at the end of the season she'll leave and not return for three years. Maybe this was her last effort this season, but being near the end of the season, hatchlings are now showing them themselves and fortunately we saw a few coming to the surface and scurrying down the beach.
 
This is another reason why strict control is carried out on the beach, because the babies get confused. Their method of finding the water is by light, the vegetation behind the beach is dark and the ocean and surf sparkles in the light of the moon and stars, any lights or torches on the beach at this time and the poor babies don't know which way to turn. On the tummy of these babies, the egg sack is still attached, nature allows this so as to give them food on their swim out into deep water, avoiding the need for them to stop and feed in the shallows where they are taken by birds or predatory fish, apparently only one or two out of a thousand survive to be adults to return twenty five years later. We're told also these babies sometimes make the mistake of digging their way to the surface during daylight hours, maybe because it's a dark stormy day,  a lot of rain maybe cooled the sand leading them to believe night has arrived. Seabirds, Vultures line the beach as if on parade waiting for the tasty, easy to grab morsels.
 
We left our turtle to cover her eggs, compact the sand using her large rear flippers and all her body weight, so as anyone walking over the nest doesn't damage these soft skinned, golf ball sized eggs. She then moves around the whole nesting area spreading and throwing sand to camouflage the area as much as possible before making her way, exhausted, back to the sea.
 
The tears you can see in the photos are not tears of joy or pain though it makes a good story. Our guide tells us that their staple diet is jelly fish which have a very high salt content. These turtle have it appears some kind of built in desalinization plant which allows the excess salt water to be excreted from the eyes. This happens day and night in the water or out of it.
 
Sometimes as many as two hundred turtles arrive during one night on this beach, literally bumping in to each other.
 
Our thanks goes to Jesse James and our guide Anton who made the experience even more enlightening.
 
This tour cost 225 TT$ per person, approx 18 pounds or 25 euros, includes permits and our evening meal, how bads that?
 
The last photo is of Big Nose the resident Pelican on our mooring post. Photo by Yvonne!
 
Who you callin' Big Nose? 
    
 
 
 
 

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