Turtle madness!
Diary extract from a staff member in Pez Maya:
Having completed my volunteer and scholar phases at Punta Gruesa (Mahahual) 'turtling' as it's referred to was new to me. I was so excited to find that we have turtles nesting on the base beach. In the morning a staff and volunteer member walk the beach playing detective, looking for turtle tracks and locating nests. This I found exciting enough, but last night we decided to take an impromptu turtle walk, we kept as quiet as possible, pointing at anything that could possibly be a turtle, then from the sea about 20 meters infront of us emerged a large Green turtle, it was an amazing sight watching her pull herself out of the water and navigate the steep sand bank that had formed infront of her, she made three false nests, which included a period where she disappeared off into the mangroves, we watched on for a further 45 minutes until she returned to the water leaving some very excited staff and volunteer members behind.
Having completed my volunteer and scholar phases at Punta Gruesa (Mahahual) 'turtling' as it's referred to was new to me. I was so excited to find that we have turtles nesting on the base beach. In the morning a staff and volunteer member walk the beach playing detective, looking for turtle tracks and locating nests. This I found exciting enough, but last night we decided to take an impromptu turtle walk, we kept as quiet as possible, pointing at anything that could possibly be a turtle, then from the sea about 20 meters infront of us emerged a large Green turtle, it was an amazing sight watching her pull herself out of the water and navigate the steep sand bank that had formed infront of her, she made three false nests, which included a period where she disappeared off into the mangroves, we watched on for a further 45 minutes until she returned to the water leaving some very excited staff and volunteer members behind.
The excitment continued this morning when whilst on our way to beach clean we discovered a newly hatched hawksbill turtle, unfortunately it had a slightly stunted front flipper and so was quickly named Nemo by the volunteers. With a little help he found the sea and happily swam off to begin his many adventures, may he be as lucky as his namesake!
Joanna Richardson
0 comments:
Post a Comment