September 19

Most people can attest to the fact that, no matter how much preparation goes into an operation, at some point things will go wrong. Occasionally, the consequences that follow are unfortunate, other times exhilarating – and when turtles are involved, both.

Anticipating a nest due to hatch in the evening, I took my regular group of tourists on our Turtle Walk excursion on a bit of special detour down the beach to our hatchery. I had stuck my fingers into the tell-tale dip in the nest earlier that afternoon while out fundraising, and had felt a few delicate, wiggly bodies of baby turtles just a few inches below the surface, making the final legs of their two or three day journey out of the eggs and up to the top sand. Knowing they should be out of the nest by the time the nightly tour began, I figured on a pleasant surprise for my guests.

When we arrived at the hatchery, I climbed in, expecting to see a scurrying bundle of eager little hatchlings crowding against the walls of the wire cages we place over the tops of those nests that are near due. It was a bit to my disappointment and confusion to find only two small hatchlings, wedged awkwardly partially beneath the flat wire base of the cage, which is supposed to be thoroughly buried so as to keep the little guys in. That’s when I noticed the tracks. Dozens and dozens of tracks. All over the hatchery!

The babies had escaped!

Someone had done a shoddy job covering the nest with the cage, and a hatchling-sized gap between the base of the cage and the surface sand had allowed more than seventy tiny little turtles loose all over the hatchery. It was a turtle explosion!

On the one hand, it was an embarrassing disaster. The stray dogs that are so well fed by the blissfully ignorant tourists at the hotel next to the hatchery have come to associate the area with food, and they have been a plague upon our hatching nests. They had gotten in and, finding an abundance of rubbery little wind-up toys at their disposal, had horribly mutilated a handful of the baby turtles as they played with and tossed them about. I found about twenty of the little guys dead around the hatchery, their flippers gnawed off, their precious little bodies limp and riddled with teeth marks. It was horrible. I did my best to subtly collect those unfortunate turtles up into a bucket and keep them out of sight from the tourists. However, you always get a few astute, clever folks in the group, and it was unavoidable that some were spotted. Still, perhaps it was a good opportunity to promote not feeding the dogs near the turtle hatchery.

Because on the other hand, the tourists were having a blast. I sent them running around the hatchery with buckets like kids on an Easter egg hunt, using the white lights on their phones to draw the dozens of (live) stray baby turtles towards them. They tip-toed around between the nests, happily shouting, “Here’s another one, Holley!” each time they discovered a tiny turtle on the run. They happily helped me to collect seventy eight little hatchlings. It was, in the end, an ultimate victory, since any of the nests that we have moved to the hatchery would have been completely lost if left in situ (where the mother laid them) due to any number of factors, so any surviving hatchlings we get out of any nests is a win for us, as they would have been entirely compromised otherwise. So collecting seventy eight baby turtles – set free in the gentle dark on a beach further up north later that night with the tour – was a joyous occasion, and something I hope my tourists will remember for the rest of their lives, spreading the word about how awesome sea turtles are.

We spent several hours the next day fixing all the rest of the hatchery cages.

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