Sat night I was on the night turtle watch at 10pm- 1.30am

The tide was right out so we were able to cross the river tributary near the beach which made it much quicker to access the beach. It was a dark night, cloudy and not many stars – no storm over the sea so we patrolled the beach as usual – walking for a while then resting. We did about 5 sweeps of the beach looking for turtle tracks from the sea. Nothing 🫤 so we did one more sweep before it was time to head home via the swampy path and the road as the tide was now 3/4 in.

About 3/4 of the way along I saw turtle tracks ! So exciting !! And she was there digging a nest for the eggs- we crouched behind her a little way back so as not to disturb her but after a while she decided she wasn’t happy with that spot so moved to find another. As we had gone over our time slot, the next group arrived at the beach, but our group leader had messaged theirs to tell them to turn off their lights on arrival and approach carefully.

If a turtle is discovered they are usually measured and tagged- this current turtle was already tagged so the leader of the 2nd group discovered this and that this turtle struggles to lay eggs because one of her rear flippers was deformed and therefore she can’t dig a deep enough hole for the eggs. She has visited the beach several times in the past few weeks and sometimes laid eggs, and sometimes not. The leaders carefully went behind her and dug out the side she was struggling with. If she can still feel the ground with her flipper she won’t lay. There needs to be a hole there. Then she started laying – it was so great to watch and my first turtle! She laid 102 eggs which the 2nd team collected

Still high on the excitement I didn’t so much notice having to walk through the water and mud to go home and noticed my stamina is better walking back too! After showering on my return it was 3.45 before I got to bed !! And needed to be ready at 8pm the following morning for the taxi to take some of us to the Whale watching 🥱

Yesterdays joke

Why did the Turtle Cross the Road?

Answer… to get to the Shell garage

What do you call a flying turtle?

Answer tomorrow 🤐