Last night we had the thrill of a lifetime. We hired a guide, Cutty, who drove us about one hour north of Prickly Bay up the east coast of Grenada to Levera Beach. The ride itself was interesting as we got to see parts of Grenada not normally seen by tourists: the little roadside bars illuminated with a single fluorescent bulb serving cold Caribs to the locals, locals sitting on a neighbors porch enjoying the cool of the night, and kids still playing on the side streets. We drove through the little town of Grenville with groups of Grenadians just standing out by the street talking or small groups of men huddled around a card table playing a raucous game of dominoes.
About 9:00 pm we arrived at a small building that serves as the reception area for park headquarters where a naturalist gave an introductory talk about the leatherback turtles and instructed us in the rules of the road of turtle watching:
From the park headquarters we drove a short distance to a parking area and gathered our gear for the short walk to the beach. Since there was no moon this night, we had to walk carefully with only the starlight to guide us. We shuffled our way through sandy paths with killer loops of vine that seemed to grab my foot at every opportunity.
We arrived at the “waiting area,” an old fishing dory laying on its side with a piece of plywood thrown up for a seating area. We were lucky since there was a light offshore breeze blowing; we’d heard of other people huddled behind the boat in 20-knot winds. After about 40 minutes we got word from one of the turtle researchers down the beach that they had found a female laying her eggs.
Following the naturalist, the group of 10 of us quickly walked along the upper beach area, carefully watching for any baby turtles that may have just emerged from their nests. We saw several distinctive tracks, but no babies. We could see small red specks from the researcher’s flashlights that marked the location of the turtle.
As we approached and our eyes got accustomed to the darkness we could make out a large, blurry form on the beach just above us. As some red flashlights illuminated the area the sheer immensity of the female turtle became apparent; she was about the size of a small kid’s swimming pool.
We were at the rear of the turtle and three researchers were lying on the ground, with two of them holding the turtle’s left rear flipper out of the way and the third, with her head literally in the hole, was counting the eggs as they dropped from the mother. About the size of tennis balls, with a very rubbery feel, the females lay up to 100 eggs per nesting.
After things calmed down a little I had a chance to talk with the lead researcher who educated me about the “ways of the turtle.” The turtles have a range of thousands of miles around the world, but always come back to the same beach where they were born. In most turtle species the females become fecund at around twenty years old, but new research is leaning towards the leatherbacks having babies at a younger age. The females are impregnated by the male turtles at sea and hold the sperm in a special reservoir in their body, and groups of eggs are then fertilized over the breeding season that runs from April to August. Using this method the females can deposit eggs on the beach many times during the season.
Each night from one to thirty females emerge from the ocean at Levera Beach and slowly lumber their way up the soft sand to about the high water mark. They then position themselves with their head away from the ocean (uphill) and slowly start digging a hole alternatively using their two back flippers, tunneling down about two to three feet and about one foot in diameter. They then lower their rear into the hole and slowly start dropping the eggs, again anywhere from 20 to 100 at a time.
During the egg laying process they are in a trance-like state and you easily approach them, feel their leathery carapace, and stare into their watery eyes. After one or two hours when all their eggs are laid, they slowly start to pack sand into the hole with their rear flippers and then begin to moving large amounts of sand into the area using their huge front flippers. The researcher cautioned me not to be behind her when that process started. “They can throw sand thirty feet in the air and you don’t want to get it into your eyes.”
Once the nest is covered, the turtle slowly starts turning around using her front flippers to pull and her back flippers to push her 700-pound body back towards the sea. Our turtle measured a little over five feet long, but the researcher said the males can get up to 2000 pounds.
He mentioned that while leatherbacks are doing well in the Caribbean, their numbers have decreased over 90% in the Pacific Ocean, mainly due to fishing, poaching, and a decrease in shoreline habitat to lay their eggs. When we were in Cumberland Island in Georgia, the researchers clearly marked the nest and then put metal netting over it to prevent wild pigs from eating the eggs. In Grenada it’s just the opposite. In the morning volunteers come down to the beach and carefully camouflage the nest to prevent people from digging up the eggs to use as food. As a researcher said, “If your family is starving, a turtle nest can provide lots of protein for a long time.”
When the female is done laying her eggs researchers triangulate the location of the nest so they can watch the nest during the 55-day incubation period. An amazing fact: Out off every 1000 eggs laid, only one baby turtle makes it to adulthood in the ocean. The researcher described the turtles leaving the nest as a very Darwinian process: “The top ones start kind of corkscrewing their way up through the sand, with the lower one climbing out on the backs of others. The poor last turtle left has no one to climb over and usually doesn’t make it out of the nest unless a volunteer is there to help.
For the ones who do make it out of the nest there are still lots of predators between the nest and the ocean, and many more in the ocean as they swim away to begin their new lives. As we watched the female slowing make her way through the soft sand to the harder sand at the water’s edge and finally into the first wavelets of ocean water, we couldn’t help but be amazed by a process that hasn’t changed since prehistoric times.
As we walked back single file along the beach we came upon another smaller female laying her eggs. A researcher turned to Michael, Sara and Mark’s 5-year-old, whom they fondly called Einstein, and said, “We need a name for this turtle.” Michael and Elizabeth, his 7-year-old sister huddled and came up with the name Natasha. Natasha will be tagged by researchers and entered into the logbook to be tracked wherever she goes around the world. As we quietly walked back to the car all of us realized we’d just experienced something very special, and gained a new appreciation for fragility of life and the dwindling numbers of the endangered leatherback turtles worldwide.
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| A naturalist tells us a male leatherback turtle can weigh up to 2000 lbs. |
- wear black clothing, the baby turtles can imprint on light colored objects when they are born,
- walk in single file along the beach,
- use only a red filtered flashlight,
- no flash photography,
- and most important, be patient. Turtles are not in a big hurry.
From the park headquarters we drove a short distance to a parking area and gathered our gear for the short walk to the beach. Since there was no moon this night, we had to walk carefully with only the starlight to guide us. We shuffled our way through sandy paths with killer loops of vine that seemed to grab my foot at every opportunity.
We arrived at the “waiting area,” an old fishing dory laying on its side with a piece of plywood thrown up for a seating area. We were lucky since there was a light offshore breeze blowing; we’d heard of other people huddled behind the boat in 20-knot winds. After about 40 minutes we got word from one of the turtle researchers down the beach that they had found a female laying her eggs.
Following the naturalist, the group of 10 of us quickly walked along the upper beach area, carefully watching for any baby turtles that may have just emerged from their nests. We saw several distinctive tracks, but no babies. We could see small red specks from the researcher’s flashlights that marked the location of the turtle.
As we approached and our eyes got accustomed to the darkness we could make out a large, blurry form on the beach just above us. As some red flashlights illuminated the area the sheer immensity of the female turtle became apparent; she was about the size of a small kid’s swimming pool.
We were at the rear of the turtle and three researchers were lying on the ground, with two of them holding the turtle’s left rear flipper out of the way and the third, with her head literally in the hole, was counting the eggs as they dropped from the mother. About the size of tennis balls, with a very rubbery feel, the females lay up to 100 eggs per nesting.
After things calmed down a little I had a chance to talk with the lead researcher who educated me about the “ways of the turtle.” The turtles have a range of thousands of miles around the world, but always come back to the same beach where they were born. In most turtle species the females become fecund at around twenty years old, but new research is leaning towards the leatherbacks having babies at a younger age. The females are impregnated by the male turtles at sea and hold the sperm in a special reservoir in their body, and groups of eggs are then fertilized over the breeding season that runs from April to August. Using this method the females can deposit eggs on the beach many times during the season.
Each night from one to thirty females emerge from the ocean at Levera Beach and slowly lumber their way up the soft sand to about the high water mark. They then position themselves with their head away from the ocean (uphill) and slowly start digging a hole alternatively using their two back flippers, tunneling down about two to three feet and about one foot in diameter. They then lower their rear into the hole and slowly start dropping the eggs, again anywhere from 20 to 100 at a time.
During the egg laying process they are in a trance-like state and you easily approach them, feel their leathery carapace, and stare into their watery eyes. After one or two hours when all their eggs are laid, they slowly start to pack sand into the hole with their rear flippers and then begin to moving large amounts of sand into the area using their huge front flippers. The researcher cautioned me not to be behind her when that process started. “They can throw sand thirty feet in the air and you don’t want to get it into your eyes.”
Once the nest is covered, the turtle slowly starts turning around using her front flippers to pull and her back flippers to push her 700-pound body back towards the sea. Our turtle measured a little over five feet long, but the researcher said the males can get up to 2000 pounds.
He mentioned that while leatherbacks are doing well in the Caribbean, their numbers have decreased over 90% in the Pacific Ocean, mainly due to fishing, poaching, and a decrease in shoreline habitat to lay their eggs. When we were in Cumberland Island in Georgia, the researchers clearly marked the nest and then put metal netting over it to prevent wild pigs from eating the eggs. In Grenada it’s just the opposite. In the morning volunteers come down to the beach and carefully camouflage the nest to prevent people from digging up the eggs to use as food. As a researcher said, “If your family is starving, a turtle nest can provide lots of protein for a long time.”
When the female is done laying her eggs researchers triangulate the location of the nest so they can watch the nest during the 55-day incubation period. An amazing fact: Out off every 1000 eggs laid, only one baby turtle makes it to adulthood in the ocean. The researcher described the turtles leaving the nest as a very Darwinian process: “The top ones start kind of corkscrewing their way up through the sand, with the lower one climbing out on the backs of others. The poor last turtle left has no one to climb over and usually doesn’t make it out of the nest unless a volunteer is there to help.
For the ones who do make it out of the nest there are still lots of predators between the nest and the ocean, and many more in the ocean as they swim away to begin their new lives. As we watched the female slowing make her way through the soft sand to the harder sand at the water’s edge and finally into the first wavelets of ocean water, we couldn’t help but be amazed by a process that hasn’t changed since prehistoric times.
As we walked back single file along the beach we came upon another smaller female laying her eggs. A researcher turned to Michael, Sara and Mark’s 5-year-old, whom they fondly called Einstein, and said, “We need a name for this turtle.” Michael and Elizabeth, his 7-year-old sister huddled and came up with the name Natasha. Natasha will be tagged by researchers and entered into the logbook to be tracked wherever she goes around the world. As we quietly walked back to the car all of us realized we’d just experienced something very special, and gained a new appreciation for fragility of life and the dwindling numbers of the endangered leatherback turtles worldwide.
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