Turtle Stats for 2012

The sea turtle nesting and hatchling season has come to an end. We haven't had a nest since early August. Our 44th and final clutch of the year hatched about one week ago. The monsoon season, and its accompanying waves (which are a blast to surf in a sit-on-top kayak), is creeping in. So no more Green or Hawksbill turtles will lay eggs and obviously no new young-ins will hatch. As Mr. Womack sang, "it's all over now." Take a glance below at our numbers for 2012. Not atrocious, but not too robust either.

Only 8 female turtles visited 3 beaches. Not to confuse anyone but that's very low. There used to be 2-3 different turtles visiting Mentawak beach (where JTP resides) per night decades ago. This year just 3 showed up - out of 8 months when they coulda nested. The optimistic takeaway is that projects doing hatchery work, protecting eggs and releasing babies have seen an increase in nesting turtles, but we got a long way to go before that's possible for us. Green turtles take 25-40 years before they return to nest (longer than any turtle, marine or terrestrial, in the world). Hawksbills start plopping out eggs a little earlier, after 20 years. JTP has only been around for 6 years, with a government run hatchery operating for 5 years before that. We got some time before it's possible for more turtles to start showing up. Another bright spot: I'm proud of our 88.4% hatching success rate. At least we got as many of those tiny turtles into the ocean as we could.

Hallelujah for Hatchlings

Alli had been staring at the sand for awhile. It was moving and making some noises here and there. She knew what was going on. I had strolled down to the beach at the end of the work day to take a swim, rest and read some book. I never got around to any of those activities. I then preceded to stare at the sand with Alli for another 30-40 minutes. I then knew what was coming too: hatchling Hawksbill sea turtles! The inaugural batch of 2012.

We did this for awhile. What can I say we were hog-wild for hatchlings!

*** Note: all photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

The only problem was this was the first time Alli and I had ever been around when the babies make their way up out of the sand. We didn't know if they'd take another 10 minutes or 4 hours. Before sunset for photos? Takeout dinner in the hatchery? Sprinting pee breaks? Vital questions we had no answers for. We were glued to the wiggling sand, continually watching it move about. You could hear the hatchlings rumbling below. Amazingly these tiny creatures (the shell is around 3.5 cm long) can take a day or two to dig out a nest 40 cm below the surface. That don't sound too jolly, but we had a feeling they were bout to hit pay dirt, or in this case, outside air.

Are them turtle heads poppin' up!?! Come on buddies...

For the record: this all took place on 10 May, I've just been a bad chronological blogger and haven't posted it yet. I'll try to be more timely, but one of the things you definitely learn in journalism school: always push the deadline. 

Moving on. After over an hour of staring one lil' bugger broke free. Another head poked out, a new flipper popped up and then it was a full-on turtle stampede. Flailing around and scurrying everywhere the hatchlings kept coming, like deranged Black Friday shoppers blood-thirsty for flat screens and video games. I can't undersell the moment. It was frickin' incredible. Watching a boil (who came up with this term!?!) of sea turtles come up like that is a surreal sight. And they just keep coming.

The winner of the grand sand race finally shows! First one is out.

After picking our jaws up and toning down the exciting expletives we kept repeating Alli and I started to transport the babies into a large cooler, counting as we plopped the manic turtles down. Dani and Izati were there too. One cool sight: while the turtles were still in the mesh net milling about, all were trying to get out and go toward the ocean. None were facing land or the jungle!

 

Can't stop, won't stop! More and more making their way to the top.

When all were accounted for 117 had made the vertical journey out of 140 eggs. That's a solid 83% hatching success rate, pretty dang good for Hawksbills. We then measured the length and width of 10 hatchlings and secured them in a huge tub. When you got 6 cats on the premises you need security.  In the days that followed another 5 made the journey out and then one loner a few days after that, pushing out total to 123.

Counting babies and into the cooler they go!

These babies came from a nest on Penut, a beach south of Juara Bay we monitor by boat. At 1am that same night we loaded up and headed out to release them. We always release from the location they were found. Some rocky reef was exposed on our walk in even though it was high-tide. These rocks are slippery. I was the one with the cooler full of hatchlings. I was concentrating a lot to not be the late-night dufus that dropped the babies. Nobody likes that dude or dudette.

Alli lookin' good with a turtle...

... and this dude lookin' creepy.

We got in position. Found a nice spot on the beach. Alli positioned the cooler, tipping it over just enough that they exploded out! Flippers gone wild, maneuvering over sand then rocks, but after that? Only ocean. Into the surf and disappear they did.

Above: the entire crew before release. Alli: set them free girl!

The hatchlings were released about 9 meters from the water line. Most of 'em took about 1.50 minutes to get into the ocean. One slow poke (he had some issues moving around a large rock) dragged behind, but after 4.30 minutes even this tortoise in the gang got to the finish line. Our job was done. They made it into the water. Hopefully in 20 years or so they'll make it back.

Sea Turtle Talk Time, Internet Style

Afternoon people (except most people reading this are sleeping right now). Here at the Juara Turtle Project (JTP) we give a whole lotta turtle talks. On some days when the tourists are poppin' in on a constant basis we give more than a lot, as we can be consumed by turtle talkin' for easily over an hour or two. That's no problem though because most of the time the talks are fun and informative, but in a sense the info can be very depressing with a dash of optimism thrown in, too.

Two German tourists getting to know Jo the Green Sea Turtle on one of our turtle talks.

Why depressing? Well, let me give a sea turtle talk to y'all, it's going to be in broad strokes so if you know a lot about these creatures already, sorry in advance for the repetition (you guys can just look at the photos). This is the JTP turtle talk, Internet edition! So there's no way to sugar coat the facts. Sea turtles are in SERIOUS trouble. To put it simply: there just ain't a lot left of 'em in the world's oceans. Only seven species exist and all have the unfortunate status of "endangered" or "critically endangered." Hundreds of millions of Green Turtles (Chelonia mydas) used to swim in the Earth's tropical and subtropical oceans. In 2004, after a worldwide accumulation of data, only about 89,000 female turtles were coming ashore to nest. Male sea turtles never come ashore, only the females, so getting a line on total population #s is rather tricky.

A Green Sea Turtle laying eggs on Mentawak Beach on 14 April 2012.

I don't want to ramble on forever about turtles (trust me, I can ramble, anyone who has ever received a voice mail from me can attest to it) so I'll try to keep this post neat and to-the-point. On Tioman Island here we used to get 4 species of sea turtle: the aforementioned Green, the giant Leatherback (the largest sea turtle, they can weigh up to 500 kg, sorry America, we're metric system now!), Hawksbills and Olive Ridleys. As Tom Petty sings, the Leatherback and Olives "don't come a-round here anymore." Luckily, the Green and Hawksbill still do. A reason for the drastic decline in sea turtle numbers on Tioman is that people collected the eggs to eat. People who lived here ate them, as did tourists who came to the island. And they were collecting the whole caboodle so no new babies were reaching the ocean. You can see where this is going: no new babies = very few remaining turtles returning to Tioman. Female turtles return to nest at the site they were born at. Talk about impressive: Tioman turtles will swim to the Philippines and Australia to feed, then turn around and haul shell back here to drop off their next generation.

Charles Fisher sadly looking at a poached nest on Mentawak Beach. Unfortunately JTP didn't find it in time. It's a photo of a photo.

So at JTP we patrol the beach we live behind on a nightly basis, multiple times per night depending on when high tide is. We look for turtles, or turtle tracks, and if there is a nesting female we collect her eggs and then place them in our hatchery on the beach. We're also patrolling two beaches south of Juara Bay by boat in the morning. After 2 months the babies all come up at the same time and then we release them exactly where we found them. Those cute little flipper happy turtles want to get to the ocean as fast as they can once they're born. If 1 out the 129 Hawksbill eggs Alli placed in our hatchery this morning survive then that's a success. The females drop a lot of eggs, but not many of them make it.

Alli placing 129 Hawksbill eggs into our hatchery. We found this nest earlier this morning on a nearby beach.

The other threats are everywhere, mostly human-caused. Drowning in fishing nets is a large one (shrimping, long-lining, etc.). Being reptiles these creatures need to breathe so they can only hold there breath for so long (an hour is pushing it to the brink for most species). People still eat their meat (turtle steak used to be a common cuisine) and eggs, and turn their shells into tourist trinkets. Boats hit them, too. Light pollution scares nesting females away, and the ever-encroaching beast known as "development" swallows up nesting habitat every year. Trash in our waters gets mistaken as food: plastics bags look like jellyfish, cigarette butts are the shape of a floating snack.

What Green Sea turtle tracks look like. We look for these on our nightly walks. These tracks are from the above female in the photo laying eggs.

Bam! Have I got you depressed yet? Sorry, the numbers are sobering and like I said, trying to sugar coat deep fried gruel is tough. But here at JTP we're trying to help out as much as we can. We patrol the beaches, collect the eggs and get as many babies in the ocean as possible. We are working on sea turtle friendly lighting for the nesting beach in front of us. Protecting nesting habitat is also on the docket. Education and outreach is always important. We are open to the public, and like I said before, we give a lot of turtle talks on a daily basis. And working with the fisheries department and the marine park around Tioman is a priority as well. A postive side to all this: communities and organizations that have continually collected eggs and released them for 30+ years (coincidentally how long a lot of species take to reach sexual maturity) have seen nesting increases. That's more turtles on the beach mon. It takes time to turn things around, but it can be done.

That's a lot of dead turtle on the line. Unfortunately this happens all too often. Another photo of a photo.

So what can individuals do? I'll touch upon this in another post as I believe I have broken my own goal, and have rambled on for a quite a bit. But remember: it isn't just about sea turtles. A striking number of species face extinction in the ocean, from huge sharks to smaller ugly fish (the Monkfish anyone?) The hope is since sea turtles are sexy charismatic megafauana (for instance: not many people hate on sea turtles, but folks sure do hate rattlesnakes) people will not only get involved to help their seven species, but the smorgasbord of other marine life that faces a continued battle to not blink out before my generation passes. Thanks for reading and if you have anyone questions about all this (and I know it's a lot) please do ask me or Alli.

Enlarge this photo to read. It's a great summary of the problems sea turtles, and a lot of marine life, face.