PART 1:
About 5 years ago an incredulous thing happened, a turtle turned up near my birding patch in the upper Firth of Forth, Central Scotland in november! A turtle in eastern scottish waters in late autumn was surely doomed & so a small 'rescue party' of divers & marine biologists was put together in an attempt to save the animal. Strangely what they found was a huge, fit & healthy Leatherback turtle that had no wish to be rescued and so the animal was left to its own devices, shortly following which (and before I got a chance to see it!) it left the Forth under its own steam (see: www.crru.org.uk/rescue/news/leatherback.htm ). The whole incident seemed bizarre & it certainly left a lasting impression. A turtle that could survive in Scottish waters had to be something special and so began a strong desire to see one of these amazing beasts for myself.
Three years later in october 2004 I was on a family holiday in the Seville area of Spain. We took a trip into Donana on one of the large green 'dune-buses' which returned to the El Acebuche visitors centre along the beach east of Matalascanas. The bus stopped briefly to show us the carcase of a turtle which had washed up onto the beach. The body was decomposing but was quite clearly that of a Leatherback Turtle. The guide explained that with a diet mainly consisting of jellyfish they are prone to the accidental ingestion of plastic bags causing death through intestinal obstruction; this was apparently what was thought to have killed the Donana turtle. On returning home I tried to get some further information on Leatherbacks; there were some details available on the web however this was dominated by some very pessimistic population reports describing the catastrophic decline in Leatherback numbers with a worldwide population reduced to only 20-30,000 adult females in1996 from a population of around 115,000 in 1982 (i.e a massive decline of 78% in 14 years). Given their dramatic decline coupled with a huge natural range it was obvious that I would never be likely to see a living Leatherback in the flesh.
In May of this year somewhat spontaneously, my wife Marian & I flung together a one week holiday in Trinidad without the kids. In effect we only really had 6 full days but were able, at short notice to book accommodation at the Asa Wright Centre which surprisingly seemed to have few other guests. The stay at Asa Wright was simply a mindblowing experience (but thats another story) which was complimented by a range of full day & half-day excursions to various sites of interest. We booked 2 full day & 2 half-day trips with one of the trips on offer being a nightime excursion to a turtle nesting beach. We were told that views of turtles couldn't be guaranteed but we thought that the chance of watching a Green Turtle or perhaps a Hawksbill hauling-up to nest was too good to miss so we decided to book the trip. Trips to see nesting turtles are tightly controlled, each visitor requires a permit & has to be accompanied by a local warden whilst on the nesting beach. The Asa Wright Centre can organise all this & in addition supplies transport with a knowledgeable guide whilst also supplying a hot evening meal. Our guide for the trip was to be Dave Ramlal & we were surprised to find that we were the only couple booked up for the trip. Dave proved to be very knowledgeable, great company & a truly top-class birder. To our delight he explained that yes Green or Hawksbill turtles were an outside possibility but that really the beach we were planning to visit was a Leatherback nesting beach!
Our trip began at 4:00pm when we left the Asa Wright Centre driving down the Arima valley before heading east to the atlantic coast. We were told the trip would take 70-90 minutes depending on traffic & unscheduled birding stops. Our first stop was at Verdant Vale (Temple Village) in the lower Arima valley where a Short-tailed Hawk was seen hunting over adjacent forest followed by a White Hawk hunting over a hillside by the road. On stopping Dave heard a calling Striped Cuckoo which he quickly found for us followed by a Trinidad Euphonia (sadly I left my long lens at Asa Wright -not thinking I would need it ). We continued on heading east towards Valencia. Further stops provided Savannah Hawk & a number of Plumbeous Kites before we eventually headed towards the Toco region & Matura. On arriving at Matura Dave stopped to organise our warden/guide with a group of local volunteers collectively called Natureseekers -of which he was also a member. We then drove down along a rough forest track to Matura beach.
We parked up by a large open-sided shelter & ate our evening meal -a delicious mixture of vegetable & chicken curries with roti -and all washed down with Asa Wright's famous rum punch. Nearby a large dead tree was holding increasing numbers of roosting Black Vultures as darkness quickly fell. Whilst we were finishing our meal it began to rain - a brisk heavy short-lived tropical downpour of warm rain which proved quite refreshing after the soporific effects of the rum punch! Within about 20 minutes the rain stopped & the dark skies quickly gave way to a rich display of stars. Dave pointed out the Southern Cross in the sky whilst suddenly all around us there seemed to be an eruption of small stars twinkling as fireflies lit up the night. Neither of us had ever seen a display of fireflies like this -it appeared both magical & stunning & has burned a lasting impression in our memory. The remnant of our picnic was quickly cleared away and we followed Dave down to the shoreline where we met a couple of the local guys from Natureseekers. Whilst one of them went off with Dave to start patrolling the beach we were left in the company of Dexter -whose thick Trinidadian accent we initially found difficult to follow. As we became attuned to Dexter's Trini talk it was apparent that he was a man with a considerable knowledge of the biology and behaviour of Leatherback Turtles. It was also clear that he and his colleagues shared a great passion and care for their turtles taking turns to patrol the nesting beaches overnight throughout the nesting season. As a Brit I had held this unspoken chauvinistic belief that nobody cares about wildlife as passionately as ourselves -well how naive and wrong is that? The guys from Natureseekers are unsung heroes devoting considerable time and effort, and enduring considerable personal discomfort in their endeavours to protect the Leatherbacks; I was truly amazed and humbled by their energy, devotion and passion.
Part 2:
Dexter described the very instinctive and stereotyped behaviour of nesting Leatherbacks. He advised us that 'incoming' females are easily spooked and will abandon partially dug nests if there is any hint of disturbance. However once the nest is fully excavated and laying has began the turtles enter a bizarre hypnotic state during which time they can be touched, measured, tagged and flash-photographed. Once laying is complete the turtles adopt their previous wary state and disturbance has again to be minimized. Dexter went on to explain the threats and dangers to nesting Leatherbacks and their offspring which on Trinidad includes not only human disturbance but also threats from feral dogs, Crab-eating Racoons and Corbeau (the Trini name for Black Vultures) whose high numbers in the Matura area are in large part due to the presence of turtle-nesting beaches. Occasionally hatchlings will appear on the beach in daylight -these youngsters are collected and held over for release the following night. The hatchlings have a strong attraction to light -an adaption which would normally draw them down to the water's edge when hatching under the cover of darkness, however lighting from coastal villages, vehicles or flashlights can easily disorientate them leading to youngsters wandering off in the opposite direction to the sea with sad and predictable results. We watched as hatchlings were released into the surf and were given the opportunity of holding a few before releasing them into the moonlit waters -we were amazed by how powerful and effective their wing-like front flippers were and how quickly the hatchlings disappeared into the darkness beyond the atlantic swell.
Whilst releasing hatchlings Dexter's walkie-talkie radio crackled into life and we were summoned to attend a nesting female Leatherback about 700metres away along the beach. This female had been observed from a distance as she lumbered up the beach. We were invited to attend when she had almost completed digging her nesting hole. We walked along the surf till we came upon the female's tracks leading from the sea up the beach. The tracks were bizarre in their pattern with a surreal span almost suggesting a JCB rather than a turtle; nevertheless the large tracks failed to prepare us for the shock of finally seeing this huge reptile in the flesh. This particular female seemed massive in both length and flipper span even though her full bulk was hidden by her partial submergence in the nest cavity. Later when we watched her return to the sea her immense bulk looming in the darkness looked more like a family saloon car than a turtle (ok, a wee bit of hyperbole here!). As the female completed the final stages of her excavations we were treated to a close-up view of the process. The turtle creates a large shallow depression with her front flippers before moving forward into this allowing her to use her hind flippers to dig the nest hole itself. The hind flippers are massive exceedingly flexible spade-like 'hands'; the right hind flipper was rolled round into a cylindrical funnel which was inserted deep into the sand before the end was flexed back forming a scoop -the whole flipper then being raised up & rotated to the right before the sand was deftly flipped well away from the hole. All of these flipper movements seemed to occur as a series of one-directional 'pre-programmed' mechanical movements more like a machine than an animal. When the right flipper had completed a single 'scooping' cycle the massive reptile's body heaved violently to the right so that the left hind flipper could complete a digging cycle before the carapace shifted back to the left for the right flipper to take over. By this series of alternating stereotyped actions a deep nesting hole was dug prior to laying.
At the appearance of the first egg flashlights were switched on and we were invited to gently explore the animal. Leatherbacks are called leatherbacks because they have a leathery almost fleshy carapace as opposed to the thick armour-plated boney scutes of more typical sea turtles. The front flippers are massive powerful wing-like structures which effectively row these large creatures across oceans and pull their massive bulks up the nesting beaches. Our huge female had jelly-like material streaming from both eyes giving her an appearance of extreme discomfort -like a bad hay-fever sufferer. This thick 'eye' mucous is in fact very concentrated brine -produced by salt glands adjacent to the eyes; Leatherbacks swallow a lot of seawater whilst feeding and thus need a mechanism to excrete this excess salt. Normally in water the mucous washes quickly away and there is no build-up however nesting females develop a significant amount of this mucous around the eyes which offers useful protection to the eyes from mechanical abrasion by sand grains.
Eventually our female completed her egg-laying so we retired to a safe distance to allow her to infill the nest; following which she dug a number of adjacent shallow pits -it was explained to us that these were 'decoy' nests which were meant to draw attention away from the main nesting chamber. Finally our female, satisfied with her nest-camouflage effort hauled herself down the beach and into the surf leaving us with the abiding memory of her massive body melting into the dark ocean swell. We barely had time to catch a breath following this amazing experience before we were directed to a much smaller female who had not been previously tagged. We watched whilst she began to lay, whilst in a torpid egg-laying trance tags were applied to one of her hind flippers and her biometrics were recorded.
Thoroughly satisfied with our trip it was time to head off back to Asa Wright. The first part of the journey involved negotiating the pothole-ridden forest track back to the main road -a bit of a white-knuckle ride in the dark but well-compensated by the numerous Parauque (a neotropical Nightjar) present. We arrived back in our cabin at Asa Wright well after midnight tired but supremely happy and with a five year quest fulfilled.
Steve,
Fantastic story. You did a great job portraying the Trinidad experience of ASA Wright and of the nesting turtles.