Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Un­der the cov­er of dark­ness, the ma­jes­tic leatherback tur­tle slow­ly made her way along the moon­lit Grande Riv­iere beach, labour­ing un­der the weight of her mas­sive cara­pace (shell) as she came on shore to lay her eggs.

So be­gan the emo­tion­al jour­ney of the fe­male leatherback tur­tle as she re­turned for the an­nu­al rit­u­al on the same beach, where she was al­so born, to de­posit her eggs.

On May 25, At­lantic host­ed a spe­cial tur­tle-watch­ing event at the beach. Staff and some mem­bers of the me­dia were al­lowed to ob­serve leatherbacks nest­ing and the re­lease of new­born tur­tle hatch­lings in­to the sea.

At­lantic CEO Nigel Dar­low, who ad­dressed the gath­er­ing of tur­tle watch­ers, which in­clud­ed At­lantic sports am­bas­sadors T&T Olympic sailor An­drew Lewis and West In­dies women's crick­et team cap­tain Meris­sa Ria Aguilleira, reaf­firmed the com­pa­ny's com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing the leatherback tur­tles. At­lantic spon­sors the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust, which over­sees lo­cal nest­ing sites.

Dar­low, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian, said pro­tect­ing, tag­ging and mon­i­tor­ing the tur­tles was part of At­lantic's over­all cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty com­mit­ment.

He stressed the need for Trinida­di­ans to recog­nise the vi­tal role that tur­tles play in bal­anc­ing the ma­rine ecosys­tem.

"They are sub­ject to vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty so we have to look af­ter them and sus­tain them and en­cour­age them," Dar­low said.

He said through its mon­i­tor­ing ef­forts the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust had record­ed an in­crease in the num­ber of leatherbacks and hawks­bill tur­tles nest­ing at Grande Riv­iere, "which is fan­tas­tic."

Chair­man of the Grande Riv­iere Na­ture Tour Guide As­so­ci­a­tion Lenn Pe­ters said the in­flux of tur­tles at the beach had in­creased from 50 to 300 for the 2013 sea­son.

He said tur­tle mon­i­tors al­so spot­ted a rare Olive Ri­d­ley sea tur­tle nest­ing on the beach, which is un­com­mon in this part of the world.

Each nest­ing tur­tle, Pe­ters said, is tagged while lay­ing eggs since this is the on­ly time they do not feel pain.

This, he said, shows there is some­thing spe­cial about Grande Riv­iere. He ex­plained that no one knows where the tur­tles and the hatch­ings go when they leave the beach or why the tur­tles re­turn to the same beach every year. How­ev­er, vil­lagers be­lieve the beau­ty of their beach has mass ap­peal for the tur­tles.

Pe­ters said the sand qual­i­ty at the beach, as well as its un­du­lat­ing sand for­ma­tion, made Grande Riv­iere a choice venue for nest­ing tur­tles.

At night close to 600 tur­tles can be found nest­ing there. Tur­tles, he said, do not nest one time for the sea­son; "they nest mul­ti­ple times, on av­er­age about six times."

Leatherbacks are ex­cel­lent swim­mers, Pe­ters said, but on land they are clum­sy be­cause of their size and shape.

He said the leatherback lays about 79 to 120 eggs at a time but among them are dum­my eggs, which means they have no hatch­lings.

Pe­ters said in 60 to 75 days, de­pend­ing the sand tem­per­a­ture, hatch­ings emerge from their eggs. It takes them two to five days to dig them­selves out of the nest.

He said the Min­istry of Works crew's dev­as­tat­ing de­struc­tion of hun­dreds of eggs last year was "a les­son learnt." But the work was nec­es­sary to pro­tect the beach, which was in dan­ger of be­ing com­plete­ly erod­ed by the near­by riv­er.

"We do not want to open a can of worms.

"We un­der­stand it could have been han­dled dif­fer­ent­ly, but we al­so know that if the riv­er was not checked we would have lost the nest­ing beach. Six­ty per cent of the eggs were lost just by nat­ur­al ero­sion from the sea and riv­er.

"The beach has been re­stored–a per­fect restora­tion," he said.

One of the great­est chal­lenges the tur­tles faced in the sea is fish­er­men's nets: when they be­come en­tan­gled in the nets they of­ten die. This, Pe­ters said, al­so placed tremen­dous stress on fish­er­men, be­cause they faced loss­es be­cause of the dam­age the tur­tles cause.

"The fish­er­men have to sus­tain their fam­i­lies too. The ques­tion is, what can be done to pro­tect the tur­tles and the fish­er­men's liveli­hood? Fish­eries Di­vi­sion has to take up the man­tle and deal with the is­sue," Pe­ters said.

Dos and Don'ts

The hunt­ing of sea tur­tles is strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed. They are pro­tect­ed by the Con­ser­va­tion of Wildlife Act, the Fish­eries Act, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act and the En­vi­ron­men­tal­ly Sen­si­tive Species Rules.

Any­one found in breach of the leg­is­la­tion faces hefty penal­ties rang­ing from fines of $20,000 to terms of im­pris­on­ment.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, any­one found ha­rass­ing the tur­tles on the pro­tect­ed sites, such as us­ing bright lights, stand­ing/sit­ting/rid­ing the tur­tles or dis­turb­ing them while lay­ing, face sa $20,000 fine.

Spe­cif­ic guide­lines are giv­en when one en­gages in tur­tle-watch­ing: for ex­am­ple, the use of white light is pro­hib­it­ed while the tur­tles are lay­ing. On­ly red lights are al­lowed, since tur­tles are not dis­turbed by the colour red.

Flash pho­tog­ra­phy is pro­hib­it­ed.

Re­mov­ing eggs and hatch­ings is pro­hib­it­ed.

Tur­tle-watch­ing facts

The nest­ing sea­son runs from March to Au­gust. April, May and June rep­re­sent the peak of the nest­ing sea­son.

The majesty of the leatherback tur­tle is al­most sur­re­al. They have a cara­pace that spans 115 cen­time­tres and a soft rub­bery body.

There are 14 nest­ing beach­es in T&T. The three main sites are Matu­ra, Fish­ing Pond and Grande Riv­iere, which are pro­hib­it­ed ar­eas. Per­mis­sion is re­quired for tur­tle view­ing at the three sites. Tur­tle-watch­ing per­mits must be ob­tained at Forestry Di­vi­sion of­fices at a cost of $5 (12 and over) and $2 for chil­dren un­der 12.

On­ly au­tho­rised tour guides are al­lowed es­cort tur­tle watch­ers on­to the beach.

As soon as night fell the beau­ti­ful, docile leatherback tur­tles be­gan ar­riv­ing from the sea. In­stinc­tive­ly they moved on­to the shore search­ing for a spot to lay. On two oc­ca­sions a tur­tle re­turned to the wa­ter be­cause she could not make it on­to the beach.

Once a tur­tle finds the spot she "body pits" (marks her spot) and be­gins the painstak­ing task of dig­ging a cav­i­ty in the sand be­neath her. Us­ing her hind flip­pers she digs a hole and de­posits her pre­cious eggs. This process takes close to half an hour.

While she is lay­ing the eggs, jel­ly-like se­cre­tions, of­ten de­scribed as tears, are seen flow­ing from the tur­tle's eyes. Pe­ters said it is the tur­tle's way of ex­cret­ing ex­cess salt.

Ob­serv­ing the en­tire nest­ing rit­u­al was heart­warm­ing and poignant, be­cause when the tur­tle is fin­ished lay­ing her eggs she cov­ers the cav­i­ty and heads back to sea leav­ing her ba­bies be­hind.

Olympic sailor An­drew Lewis said he was hap­py to be part of the At­lantic ef­fort for tur­tle rights, since he loved all an­i­mals, but had a pas­sion for ma­rine an­i­mals.

He said peo­ple in this coun­try do not have love or re­spect the sea.

"I am a sailor, and my con­nec­tion to the sea is a very cru­cial. When I am sail­ing I get plas­tic bags on my rud­der–and it is some­thing that ac­tu­al­ly slows you down in a race. It is a big prob­lem with the tur­tles, lit­ter­ing in the sea, and all these kinds of things that are not do­ing na­ture well," he said.

He be­lieves with ed­u­ca­tion and time peo­ple can de­vel­op that ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the sea and the crea­tures that live in the wa­ter.

This view was shared by WI women's crick­et team cap­tain Meris­sa Aguilleira.

She said re­cent sto­ries of tur­tles be­ing slaugh­tered and peo­ple sit­ting on the backs of the tur­tles demon­strat­ed a lack of un­der­stand­ing.

Aguilleira said, "I think the more you get peo­ple in­volved and get them to see what is hap­pen­ing, I think it will re­al­ly in­flu­ence them in­to chang­ing their mind­set in what they are do­ing now."