Brent Pin­heiro

Bathed in a soft red glow from the near­by lights, the guides pa­trol the one-kilo­me­tre stretch of sand. Their bod­ies cast long shad­ows in the dim light, their eyes search­ing the pound­ing surf for a head or two pok­ing above the sur­face. Fi­nal­ly, a head pops up, then an­oth­er.

Dri­ven pure­ly by in­stinct, the fe­male leatherbacks drag them­selves on to the quartz sand, dig a hole us­ing their back flip­pers, and de­posit up to 100 eggs at a time— all un­der the pro­tec­tive eyes of the Grande Riv­iere Tour Guide As­so­ci­a­tion (GRT­GA).

By morn­ing, hun­dreds would come on to the Grande Riv­iere Beach on Trinidad’s north coast to nest, a rit­u­al that has tak­en place since di­nosaurs roamed the earth.

For six months of the year, every year, the mighty leatherback tur­tles make the trek back home to the very beach where they once hatched. There are over 700 beach­es in 98 coun­tries where leatherbacks nest.

But Grande Riv­iere is spe­cial; this one-kilo­me­tre stretch of sand is one of the high­est-den­si­ty sites in the world. And, not that the tur­tles care, but the area has even been fea­tured in a BBC doc­u­men­tary with the leg­endary Sir David At­ten­bor­ough.

But leg­endary vis­i­tors aside, peo­ple come by the car­load and in maxi-taxis from all over the coun­try for tur­tle nest­ing sea­son, which runs be­tween March and Au­gust every year. Wait­ing to greet them is GRT­GA chair­man Len Pe­ters and his team of guides.

Al­ready in ex­is­tence for 27 years in its cur­rent form, the non-prof­it, com­mu­ni­ty-based con­ser­va­tion or­gan­i­sa­tion con­ducts eco­tourism tours and man­ages the Grande Riv­iere Beach dur­ing tur­tle nest­ing sea­son.

Al­ready, over 4,000 vis­i­tors from more than 100 coun­tries have de­scend­ed on Grande Riv­iere, mak­ing this sea­son quite a spe­cial one for both man and tur­tle.

“In March, we had 1,025 tur­tles nest­ing. In April, we had 4,006. The to­tal nest­ing event to date is 7,800 plus,” Pe­ters told Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day.

He added, “We had 343 tur­tles on the 6th of May. We haven’t had 300 in quite a long while. So, this sea­son is spe­cial. We are get­ting num­bers that we have not seen in a long while.”

No one can say just why the tur­tles have come in such large num­bers, al­though Pe­ters has his own hy­poth­e­sis—a ban­quet of sorts out at sea. He said, “It seems like tur­tles would have fed suf­fi­cient­ly dur­ing the three-year off-nest­ing pe­ri­od be­cause in Flori­da, that’s an­oth­er area where the North At­lantic pop­u­la­tion nests. They’re ob­serv­ing nest­ing in­creas­es as well.”

But while nest­ing sites like Las Cuevas have seen an in­crease in tur­tles com­ing ashore to nest, pop­u­lar nest­ing spot Matu­ra has seen a de­cline in num­bers due to coastal ero­sion and sar­gas­sum—both symp­toms of a warm­ing Earth.

Sar­gas­sum chokes the shore­line and cov­ers the sand that tur­tles need to ac­cess to cre­ate nests.

It al­so isn’t a part of the leatherback tur­tle’s di­et, so un­less so­lu­tions are found, Pe­ters laments, con­ser­va­tion pro­grammes may have to move to the tur­tles’ new­ly cho­sen spots.

The tur­tles aren’t the on­ly ones strug­gling. Pe­ters ex­plained that com­mu­ni­ty groups are strug­gling to op­er­ate on the ground due to a lack of crit­i­cal fund­ing used to fi­nance pa­trols, sea tur­tle tag­ging, etc.

“The Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust (TVT), an um­brel­la NGO, is wait­ing on fund­ing from the Green Fund to pro­vide sup­port for all the con­ser­va­tion groups on both is­lands.

“That fund­ing, un­for­tu­nate­ly, has not yet been re­leased to TVT. So, what is hap­pen­ing right now is that con­ser­va­tion groups at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el are re­al­ly strug­gling to get by. They don’t have the re­sources to be out there every night,” he said. He’s al­so call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to re­lease fund­ing for projects that have al­ready been ap­proved. “I know that the gov­ern­ment prob­a­bly has chal­lenges with cash flow.

But I just want to ap­peal to the pow­ers that be that they should give a lit­tle at­ten­tion to the re­lease of the fund­ing for tur­tle con­ser­va­tion, be­cause we are the man­agers of the last im­por­tant pop­u­la­tion of sea tur­tles,” Pe­ters said.

Pe­ters wasn’t al­ways this pas­sion­ate about tur­tle con­ser­va­tion. He re­counts child­hood mem­o­ries of leatherbacks ar­riv­ing in droves. Ear­ly morn­ing swims where he and his friends would com­pete to see who could hold their breath the longest while hold­ing on to the tur­tles’ back flip­pers as they dove in­to the depths.

Friends toss­ing eggs they found at the bot­tom of the riv­er at each oth­er. Back then, even tur­tle meat was a com­mon meal in the vil­lage. But a chance con­ver­sa­tion at 18 would stop him in his tracks, turn­ing him from con­sumer to con­ser­va­tion­ist. While on a trip to St Croix in the ear­ly 1990s, he met some Brazil­ians who men­tioned how few tur­tles nest­ed in Brazil.

“I was telling them that we had hun­dreds, they were like, no, there’s no place in the world where there are so many leatherbacks,” he re­counts. “I sud­den­ly recog­nised, wait a minute. What I was tak­ing for grant­ed, this was some­thing that was not ex­pe­ri­enced any­where else on the plan­et,” he said.

Re­turn­ing home with a new pur­pose wasn’t easy. A lot of time was spent con­vinc­ing his fel­low vil­lagers to re­move tur­tles from the din­ner menu and to see their eco­nom­ic val­ue. He said, “You were deal­ing with peo­ple who didn’t have the train­ing and skills that we now have.

It was frus­trat­ing at times be­cause peo­ple didn’t un­der­stand the down the road. Would there be a down the road?”

He added, “You had to be in it for the long haul. Just as our tur­tle re­turns in 20 years’ time, we have now left the sea tur­tles re­turn­ing that we saved as an in­fant, as a ba­by.”

But his per­se­ver­ance has paid off. Ac­cord­ing to Pe­ters, eco­tourism is now the main eco­nom­ic dri­ver in Grande Riv­iere. The Mt Plaisir Es­tate Ho­tel em­ploys over 40 per­sons full-time. There are four oth­er small ho­tels, and about 50 guest­hous­es — each one owned by vil­lagers. Even those not di­rect­ly em­ployed in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor, such as farm­ers, ben­e­fit by be­ing able to sell their pro­duce to the var­i­ous prop­er­ties.

“The fo­cus is on sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties, sus­tain­able liveli­hoods, us­ing the sea tur­tle as a cat­a­lyst for change, but en­sur­ing that they get the best pro­tec­tion in the process...I’ve seen how the same vil­lagers who didn’t care about the tur­tles now will do right by them as a sec­ond na­ture,” he said.

The now 55-year-old hopes vis­i­tors will leave the beach not on­ly changed, just like his fel­low vil­lagers, but as am­bas­sadors, just like him — ex­cit­ed to pro­tect a species that is list­ed as vul­ner­a­ble by the In­ter­na­tion­al Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Na­ture (IUCN).

And that pro­tec­tion doesn’t on­ly mean pa­trolling the beach every night, it means ex­er­cis­ing cau­tion on nest­ing beach­es — no dri­ving, no light­ing of fires, no re­moval of sand, no dig­ging of holes, and no loud nois­es. As Pe­ters put it, “We are re­al­ly blessed to be the guardians of the last di­nosaur-like crea­ture that still ex­ists in the ocean.”