Finding the Mama Turtles

Every night, two or three people would walk with Roberto up and down our beach to look for nests or mama turtle tracks. Our presence also deterred the poachers. Usually there were two beach walks, one around midnight and another around 4 or 6 in the morning, depending on the tides. My second beach walk, we saw a mama turtle.

Roberto went up close to check her out, and said that she needed time. So, we kept walking down the beach to check the far side, and then made our way back to her. Roberto went to check on her again and said it was time. Time for what I didn't know, but I was excited!

We slowly walked up to her. She had dug out a nest using her huge arms and legs, and had begun to lay eggs. Roberto handed me two gloves and said, "go ahead." I looked at him puzzled and he motioned for me to remove the eggs from underneath her while she was laying them. He explained that she was in a trance and wouldn't notice our presence. So I slowly brought my hand closer to a small hole, just a bit larger than my hand. Even slower, I started removing the eggs and placing them in a plastic bag. The eggs were soft, wet and warm. As I got used to terrified feeling that the turtle would wake up and be furious at me, I began to remove the eggs a bit faster.

Roberto asked me to stand back for a moment while he tagged her. She didn't even flinch while the metal created a small ring around her right arm. With much less fear, I continued to dig out the eggs until she finished.

There were still about 2o eggs left to get when she started covering her nest, so we had to wait for the mama to cover up her nest with her enormous body and pat it down. Then, she slowly made her way back into the ocean without even a glimpse in our direction. We dug up the nest and put the remaining eggs into the bag. There were just over 100 eggs when we were finished.

In awe of the birthing of 100 turtle eggs, we walked to another place on the beach to dig up a new nest for the eggs. Since it wasn't busy season, we didn't need to put the new eggs in the hatchery. We just needed to rebury them elsewhere so the poachers and predators couldn't just follow the mama's scent right to the nest.

We dug a hole, imitating the mama about as deep as the distance from the tips of your fingers to your elbow, and emptied the bag into the hole. We covered up the hole, using the flat bottom of our forearms, still imitating the mama turtle, and patted it down hard.