Saved by Sound

I've been doing the field biology thing for a little while now. Over the last couple of years I scoured the desert ground for a lot of herps, sometimes for official business, but mostly for thrills and pleasure - the pure fun of it. One thing I came to know quickly: listening matters, a lot. Sure, you need a solid set of eyes to find what you're looking for, but keeping your ears open and paying attention to the audio cues around you is also mightily important and useful. Good thing I’ve only seen two Dinosaur Jr. shows in my life, cause a collection of their ticket stubs has to affect one’s hearing.

Listening enabled me to see Desert tortoises duke it out and a Tiger rattlesnake woof down a mouse. I found a lot of Gila monsters and tortoises this way, plus zoned in on quite a few snakes. And since they shout out for all to hear, following the calls of toads and frogs usually rewards you with a slap-happy monsoon pool of amphibian copulation that is always comical to see. The point is: keep your ears open and sometimes it's alright to just shut the hell up in the field. And soak up the sounds.

Louise the Green turtle laying her first nest of 2012 on Mentawak Beach on  April 14th.  All red light photos of Louise are from previous landings, not the night I'm writing about now. Call it red-light photo turtle fatigue.

On June 6th turtle watch was on. Louise (named after my Grandma and pictured above) was expected to grace us with a clutch of eggs for the sixth time. Since Green turtles can nest up to seven times, but often fall short of this number we weren't completely positive our first Mentawak Beach mother of 2012 would return. At 20:23 hours Alli and I saw that she did, except we messed it all up. 

When patrolling a nesting beach the ideal spot to walk is between the high tide line and vegetation, which is up on the beach away from the water line. The Lady and I were not following this rule at all. We were strolling at the water's edge for some reason. I honestly don't know why. Alli shined her red light ahead of us and there was our large female breaking the surf and coming onto land. The light went right into her eyes. After a few quiet, but startled "Holy shits," we retreated away in hope she would still come on shore. She didn't. We scared her off. She was coming ashore between JTP and Lagoon, a resort at the end of Mentawak. Now she was back in Juara Bay and (hopefully) plotting to get onto the sand sometime later tonight. Usually when you interrupt a turtle like this it's the equivalent of being walked in on in a bathroom stall. You feel semi-violated for a moment and stop what you're doing, but eventually the process continues. Past experiences say the turtle would make another landing, especially since it was still early.

She fell in the pit definitely to the tune of Parks and Rec.

I did a stealth walk of the beach with no light and (of course) up higher, but this discovered nothing. We then decided to continue our regular walking schedule in hope she would return.

At 23:05 I was strolling the beach and heard some intriguing noise, which sounded a lot like sand whacking leaves (I need to work on more mysterious foreshadowing). Not much on the beach this hour makes noise besides turtles flinging sand, tourists being soused, or your occasional cat mucking about. I heard it again and again, the sand ramming against the vegetation. I was walking near the high-tide line and saw no turtle tracks in the area though. None. The moon was assisting, and along with my red light, I couldn’t find any tracks at all. I kept hearing the noise and after a minute or so decided to investigate regardless of the lack of tracks. I got down low and crept toward the sound, eventually losing all my dreams of becoming a suspense novelist, but I did scope out the turtle we spooked earlier.

I rang the gang and since she was close everyone got there fast. She laid 125 eggs between 23:50 and midnight, and left for Juara Bay about 70 minutes after that. But this is merely the standard data and numbers I’m regurgitating back to you all.

Slip slidin' away... to the tune of Paul Simon, duh...

This night is inimitable for another reason: no tracks existed because they were covered up by people. When folks showed up they commented on the absence of tracks too. After she was done laying eggs, we started to poke around. There were no standard turtle tracks leading up to the body pit, but a lot of other markings made a nice trail to our female. Zig-zag patterns from the ocean to her were present. Imagine slowly walking on a beach and moving one of your feet back and forth, left and right, like the scraggly line on a heart rate monitor, but vertical instead of horizontal. At the water’s edge a smattering of footprints existed too, with the zig-zags heading up from there.

Before long we knew what the jig was. Other folks found the turtle before us and covered up her tracks, with the hope of leaving us in the lurch. We never see the tracks, find no nest, stop our patrols for the evening and they come back, dig out the nest and have 125 eggs at their disposal. No other options were feasible.

The kicker is no one was around when I found the turtle. And nobody was seen while we hung out in anticipation and then collected the eggs. After our people-covered-up-the-tracks hypothesis was agreed upon, we all hung back as Louise covered up her now empty nest. Sitting in a quiet circle, enduring the dead wind and ravenous sand flies, we chatted quietly about the covered-up tracks. It’s disheartening to think people, only a couple minutes walk away from JTP, would so obviously try to trick you so they could take some eggs. Frustration and dismay were in the air, along with relief that we got the leg up this time. Nights like this exemplify in bold letters with an exclamation point why our daily beach patrols are necessary. JTP’s been going for six years and after all its time here people still want to take eggs next door from us. Conservation work is a prolonged slog. We obviously haven’t convinced some people a turtles’ eggs are worth more in the ground than out of it.

Her one-way track back to the sea the next morning. I tried getting a photo of the covered up tracks but  after so long they just looked like plain ol' disturbed sand.

Around 00:45, as Louise was still covering up, we heard the “bip bip bip” sounds of an alarm on a stop-watch. A reminder for the covered-up track crew that it might be safe to dig out the nest? Maybe. Nobody showed and shortly after Izati and I sleuthed around with our torch lights to see if anyone was milling about or hiding. Nothing. Five minutes later though we heard two motorbike engines rev up relatively close by and head off. Coincidence? Could be. We’ll never know.

People were thrilled I found the turtle without seeing tracks. Not me. If we had followed protocol and walked the beach the correct way, Louise wouldn’t have gotten rattled. Eggs would have been laid much earlier in the evening. Considering the location of her first attempt the tracks, most likely, would have remained intact and not become a thing of the past. Saved by sound tonight? Yeah, you could say that. But I wonder if there are a collection of past ghost tracks we’ve never found. With tracks being deliberately disguised on the beach JTP resides on and having already endured our first poached nest of 2012 in May, it’s going to take a lot more than open ears, and even eyes, to alleviate the challenges these sea turtles face on their natal beaches. We’ll gladly take this nest for now, but it just shows the present and future have a noisy disposition.

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.