A Volunteer's Experience
Great article from one of our volunteers about her monitoring experience
Great experience lived by our volunteer Lorna during one of our night monitoring of turtle nesting.
Responding to an invitation in El Pedasieno, we volunteered to help monitor sea turtles at El Lagarto Beach. The original date, based on nocturnal high tide and waning moon optimal for turles to come ashore and lay eggs, was rained out. The next night we ventured out around 9 p.m. stumbling under stars with red flashlights. We were excited to find three sets of old turtle tracks, one measuring 99 cm. across. Unfortunately each nest site had been discovered by poachers and the eggs removed.
On our second pass down the beach, now accustomed to the dazzling star light, we came within thirty meters of a turtle emerging from the surf. While we waited in quiet anticipation, she traversed the beach to the palms above high tide line wandering around in search of the best nesting spot.
She was frustrated on her first attempt to dig by palm tree roots. When she left this site, we thought that she was heading back to the sea. We seized the opportunity to photograph and measure her shell, noting the many barnacles attached. Undaunted by our examinations, she circled back under another palm and dug a bed large enough to accommodate her entire body. Within this bed, she began excavating a small, deep hole. We watched in amazement as she scooped and flung sand with her versatile handlike back flippers.
As an inverted crescent moon rose to join Orion´s Belt and Pegasus, we saw other flashlights approaching. Two potential poachers appeared and were approached by two members of our five some. After a polite conversation they retreated in opposite directions down the beach.
It was around 11 p.m. when the turtle came ashore. Now at 130 a.m. we waited while she continued to dig the perfect nest. We will thrill by what we were witnessing. There were also falling stars, shooting meteors, and moonlit waves breaking on the shore below us as the tide receded.
Then she stopped digging, began grunting, and secreted a pungent lubricant to facilitate the passing of eggs. She started dropping ping pong ball like eggs into the plastic bag that an experienced group member had used to line the nest. One of the poachers returned and along with the rest of us, watched her drop fifty two eggs. When it was apparent that we would take all of the eggs for renesting, he bid us good night and walked away.
After 2 a.m. as the turtle filled in her nest with sand, we transported her eggs to a safe spot for burial to hopefully hatch around 60 days later.
What unfolded that night turned out to be one of the most exhilarating, educational, and beautiful events any of us had witnessed. It reminded us how fortunate we are to be among the turtles in nature, in Pedasi, in Panama!
Lorna