An interesting minibus trip, including fording a river in the dark, took us to the beach of Ostional where thousands of Oliver Ridley turtles are currently making their presence felt. These are the smallest of the marine turtles and Ostional beach is the second most important nesting beach in the world for them, the first being in South Africa. Over a few nights they come up onto the beach to lay eggs - an incredible and exhausting process (for both turtle and observer) as you watch them slowly crawl up the beach, dig a deep hole (which may fall in on itself, in which case they have to start again), and then lay over 100 eggs.
As dusk drew on more and more turtles slowly and silently emerged from the sea, in the end I was worried I was going to tread on one as it got darker and darker. Neither the darkness nor our presence put these amazing creatures off at all. It really was quite surreal.
We were also privileged to see the release of a baby turtle - part of a conservation project to ensure that as many turtles as possible actually make that first, dangerous, journey as successfully as possible. You must play Dave's video below, it's soooo cute!
Interestingly the local village play a really important role in the preservation of these turtles. As the turtles come ashore volunteers from the village arrive at the beach to keep watch on them as they dig holes, lay eggs and then make their way back to sea (a period of several hours). These volunteers will sit, with torches, and keep a general eye on things - helping out if necessary. Also, the village benefits from being able to sell a certain amount of turtle eggs. This may appear strange but in fact the turtles lay far too many eggs on the one stretch of beach which means that a certain % of them will never get through to maturity and need to be cleared off in order to enable better survival of the rest. The money obtained from the sale of the eggs - several thousand dollars - is then distributed amongst the community. As a result it's a real 'win win' with the turtles being helped and looked after at the same time as this rather remote coastal village.
I'll never forget this incredible experience, the first glimpse of one of these creatures literally brought tears to my eyes. I've see it on TV but this was something else!
The evening was made more exciting by the fact that our guide thought he'd lost a member of his party on the pitch black beach - never mind, he turned up in the end!
Will get blogging more regularly soon - have started our course and it's totally manic. We've been getting home, making something to eat out of what's in the fridge ( a bit like one of those TV programmes where you have 10 mins to make a meal out of half a tomato, 2 bananas, a tin of sardines and some grated cheese (no don't send recipes), doing homework and collapsing into bed!
No comments:
Post a Comment