Turtle Watching!

This weekend was especially exciting, as we had our final two outings for the CCS program.

Friday night we went turtle watching at Matura, on the eastern coast of Trinidad. It is the second busiest beach in the world for leatherback sea turtles to nest. Leatherbacks are the largest species of sea turtles, and they were amazing to see!

First of all, it was just exciting to be at the beach at night. It reminded me of being at beaches at home at night, and camping trips on the beach on the peninsula. The temperature was perfect, not too warm or cool, with a strong sea breeze, and there were big waves and a bright moon, and you could see the silhouettes of the palm trees, and the sand was really soft.

We only got to see one sea turtle up close because the tide was strong enough that they were having trouble coming onto the beach. We saw a few that tried to get up the beach, but after being beaten back by the waves a few times went back out to sea to wait for a better tide. When you're turtle watching you have to be really careful because if you make too much noise or use bright lights the turtles won't come to the beach. You also can't get close to them until their nest is mostly made, or they will not lay their eggs.

The turtle we got to see was about 5 feet long and 4 feet wide, which I guess is pretty average sized. We got to watch her finish digging the hole, which was impressive. She used her back fins kind of as shovels, digging them deep into the sand and then turning them over to scoop sand out of the ground. Their nests end up being 2 1/2 to 3 feet deep. Then once they start laying eggs they (apparently) go into a sort of trance, so you can take pictures while they are laying. The turtle we saw had not been tagged (they tag all the turtles so they can track them. Leatherback sea turtles travel the globe, but I think mostly live in the North Atlantic because that's where their favorite jellyfish to eat live. So they travel up to Canada and then to Europe and Africa, and nest in around Trinidad, Venezuela, and Suriname) so we saw her get tagged, and then we got to see her lay her eggs, and take pictures, and feel her skin and shell.

Leatherbacks lay between 80 and 120 eggs at once, and they are perfectly round, and are slightly larger than golf balls. These turtles end up nesting about seven times, every 8 or 9 days, so they can end up laying between 800 and 1000 eggs in all. However, their survival rate is not very good, and only 1 out of all these is expected to survive to adulthood.

It was so amazing to see all the eggs, and to get to feel the shell and skin. Just the whole nesting process was amazing, and after seeing the difficulties some of the turtles were having just making it onto the beach made it seem even more incredible. This was definitely one of the highlights of this semester.