Thursday, July 19, 2012

Sea Turtles nesting

The other night on Friday the 13th, we decided we would head to dinner then to the beach.  We heard that sea turtles were starting to come to the land and lay their eggs this month.  I was so excited because I had never seen a sea turtle on land, only while snorkeling in Hawaii (which in itself was AMAZING!).  Anyway we quickly ate dinner and off to the beach we went.  We lathered ourselves in bug spray and off we went.  When we got there it was still a little light out so we had to sit and wait.  I watched and watched for sharks but didn't see any.  It was finally getting dark and Jase said, we better wait another half hour.  UGH!  this was the time that i saw a sneaky crab and wanted to be done for the night. 
We waited and waited and when we could barely see anything we went for a stroll on the beach.  So romantic, a long walk to the beach.  Also, let me remind you, Kendyl is terrified of sand so we had her to carry with a death grip on us.  We walked about a quarter mile and we saw tracks!  we followed them up to a HUGE turtle.  We are not allowed to turn on lights of anysort since it scares them and they are endagered.  Not another 10 yards away, we saw another turtle approaching the beach from the water!  i was almost in tears with excitement!  Then along came 3 crazy save the turtle activist and they invited us to watch them lay eggs with a special red light!  We watched her lay 120 eggs!  Woo hoo!  It was AMAZING!
special facts
Sea turtles cannot reprodice or lay eggs until at least the age of 35, but up to age 45ish
only 1 egg in 1000 will make it to reproductive age. that is 1 in 10 nests that will be able to reproduce.
They only lay eggs about every 2-3 years. 
the hole they lay the eggs into is a good foot-2 feet deep! (they only have flippers!)

Anyway, I left happy and cannot wait to maybe go see some more this weekend. 



Here we are after, in the wind away from the turtles, finally a picture!  darn wind! and bolow is the type of turle we saw.  It is a logger head sea turtle.  Ours was 46 inches long and about 3 feet wide. 

1 comment:

  1. I love turtles! And I love your shirt! You look good!

    ReplyDelete