Jinx

22:45 – Turtle at 3
Dom: where is she?
Kate: behind the 3 palm, she’s digging.

The turtle is unsuccessful digging in the hard substrate and has made her way up and over a little wall, stopping at the edge of the terrace surrounding the pool.

Alice: what if the turtle goes into the swimming pool?
Dom: she’s not going in the swimming pool.
Alice: but what if she does? How will you get her out?
Dom: well, I won’t let her go in.

The turtle settles down, digs a nest chamber and lays her eggs (6th nest of the season, only 94 eggs!). The nest is relocated out of the area due to ongoing construction.

1:10 – Flash forward 2 hours, turtle at 3 (déjà vu?)

Kate stands staring at a fresh set of tracks where the turtle’s down track should be, accept it’s a definite uptrack. Confused, she scans the beach in front of her, OK there’s our girl’s downtrack... so this must be a new turtle’s track! Cautiously, she follows the track up and over the wall (familiar...), around in a circle and then into a small patch of grass where is disappears. Kate searches for any sign of life: a noise, a disturbance in the nearby sand... nothing. She turns the red light to white, scanning for another downtrack further up the beach. Still nothing. In a sudden realization, she scans the pool surface for movement. Nothing.

Kate: there is a turtle at 3, I see her uptrack but can’t find her down track.
Dom: what?
Kate: I see the up track, the other girl’s down track, but the tracks for the second girl disappear into the grass and she is nowhere to be seen.
Dom: eum....

A light sound from the direction of the pool breaks the discussion... they both turn their heads.

Dom: I know where she is...
Kate: (gasp)oh my god she’s in the pool.

And the question asked 2 hours earlier in the exact same spot arises once again.
Kate: How do we get her out of the pool?

They stand at the edge of the pool staring at the large reptile gliding gracefully, silently through the depths of the water.

Kate: Call security for help?
Dom: Drain the pool?
Kate: that seems complicated. Where are the steps? (walking to the far end of the pool)

Dom jumps into the middle, chest high in water. He makes his way over to her, positioning himself to force her to swim towards the steps. He corrals her toward the steps, forcing her onto the first set. She strongly pushes around him and races toward the other end. She looks as if she’s going to crash into the edge but stops suddenly and turns. She’s scared now...

5 minutes later: She’s back at the steps, suddenly surfacing and gasping for breath. Now’s our chance. Dom slowly closes in on her and her front flipper climbs the second step. He moves closer, cornering her. She tries to back away but is caught. Dom grabs her shell, one hand at her head and the other at her tail and hoists her front half onto the pool edge. Her flippers are on the tiles, almost there... She now seems to understand what’s happening. With her strong front flippers scraping at the tiles and Dom giving one more push, she slides onto the side and scrambles incredible fast to the grass edge. Exhausted, she pauses after a minute of hurried crawling and breathes heavily. Another 2 minutes and she’s slowly making her way down the sand bank and into the safety of the waves.

300!

The Battle of Thermopylae took place in August or September 480 BC at the pass of Thermopylae. King Leonidas of Sparta led an allied force of c. 7000 men to block the advancing Persian army led by King Xerxes. It occurred during the second Persian invasion of Greece.

Leonidas took 300 men of the royal bodyguard and more support troops joined the party on the way. By the time they arrived at the pass more than 5000 men had joined at camp was set up to defend the narrowest part of the pass. By mid August the Persian army was sighted approaching the pass. Xerxes sent an emissary to negotiate with Leonidas, offering them ‘freedom and to be friends of the Persian people’. Un-surprisingly Leonidas refused the offer, and told the emissary ‘come get them’ when asked to lay down his weapons. The resulting battle was inevitable.
The Persian army is thought to have numbered over 200 000 men. However the Greeks held them up for 7 days before being annihilated.
According to Herodotus, the Spartans consulted the Oracle of Delphi earlier in the year and Leonidas knew he was going to lose the battle and his life.

In part, this is the basis of 300, a blockbuster movie released in 2007.

However, for us, ‘300’ is associated with October 20th. This is the day when we finally broke the 300 nests in one season.

October Update - 76 turtles!

With only 5 weeks to go, the season is slowly coming to an end. So far, we have reached an astonishing 76 turtles – the all time high for the project was 67 in 2008. Had you asked us in July if the project would pass last year’s numbers we probably would have said no. The season has seen a second wind: nesting activity continued steadily through August and the last 3 weeks has seen 11 more turtles starting their nesting seasons, including 5 neophytes. Neophyte numbers have not yet reached last year’s total - two short - but we won’t be surprised if a few more come up.

We have now documented 282 nests (as of October 7th), which was the total number at the end of last season! Nest hatches are now at their peak, with at least 3 nests emerging every night. Nearly impossible to predict when the nest will erupt, we find most by spotting a path of trampled sand leading to the ocean; usually with over 100 small tracks coming from a depression in the sand. With over 100 nest excavated, we have had over 11500 hatchlings crawl into Pasture bay and swim to new horizons.

Christine O’Sullivan from Jamaica joined us for a week in September to learn about our monitoring project. We have been in regular contact since her visit and are pleased to announce that this has lead to the formation of the Jamaica Turtle Project. It is the first sea turtle monitoring program in Jamaica. It was set up just a few days ago and already recorded a nest hatch and one hawksbill nesting. We wish them luck!