Warm Caribbean nights.
Great music. People-watching, oh,
and baby turtles!
Could it get any
better?
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| Four vocalists - great voices |
Four vocalists Lieutenants Nancy Armenta, Victoria Tapia Master and Gustavo Lopez plus the leader Captain Eduardo Navarro Graciano lit up the stage with their huge smiles and rich voices.
By the time the group started
– precisely at eight o’clock, military time – the chairs were filled with navy
and city officials and numerous locals.
And then the music started.
Wow! You could tell the group of eighteen
musicians had been together for quite some time. Everyone was relaxed and performing at their
peak. It was a great way to spend an
evening. Perfect!
As for the tiny turtles, as most of you know we live in
a house on the beach in Mexico and summer time is turtle nesting time.
The next night, Wednesday evening, as we were getting settled to enjoy a glass of wine and watch the sunset we heard a voice yell: “Hey, he’s got a baby turtle!” Lawrie and I dashed out to the beach to see what was happening.
Three visitors from Nashville had caught a local canine in the act of gulping down a hatchling. Too late! He licked his lips, checking around for another tasty treat but the Nashville folks were fiercely guarding the nest.
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| Kim Bailey & Celeste Reed - Nashville |
The next night, Wednesday evening, as we were getting settled to enjoy a glass of wine and watch the sunset we heard a voice yell: “Hey, he’s got a baby turtle!” Lawrie and I dashed out to the beach to see what was happening.
Three visitors from Nashville had caught a local canine in the act of gulping down a hatchling. Too late! He licked his lips, checking around for another tasty treat but the Nashville folks were fiercely guarding the nest.
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| Bert Bailey - grinning like a little kid. |
Unfortunately, this year, none of the eggs from the
nests along our stretch of beach have been collected allowing numerous neighbourhood canines to dig up eggs and sometimes the babies. According to my neighbor Ronda Winn-Roberts’ blog,
Isla Mujeres News & Events,
SEMARNAT the government office responsible the ocean and shores around Mexico, in
conjunction with the local turtle farm, have hatched out approximately 33,000
baby turtles this summer. A record
breaking 130,000 hatchlings are predicted for this year, creating a huge space
problem. The turtle farm is overflowing
with nests, baby turtles, and eggs. There
just isn’t any more room for eggs. Lucky
for us; because of the overcrowding we were able to experience a hatching firsthand,
to see the baby turtles digging their way to the surface.
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| Celeste Reed, taking babies to the water |
Our shoreline currently has a two-foot deep buildup of Sargasso seaweed, drifting in from mid-Atlantic. It is a weird phenomenon this year affecting all of the Caribbean beaches. As the babies scrambled towards the ocean they were faced with a mountain of seaweed, so our little group of humans gave them helicopter rides over the obstructions into the water.
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| Seaweed drifting in from Atlantic |
Then in the gathering dusk the sharp-eyed frigate birds
spotted the tiny bobbing heads, diving from great heights to snatch up a few of
the babies. The turtles face a long and arduous
life of avoiding predatory fish, boat propellers, fishermen’s nets, illegal
hunting, and entanglement in plastic trash.
It isn’t easy being a turtle – about one turtle in a thousand will live
to maturity.
Lawrie checked the nest again this morning. A few more late arrivals managed to dig out
and disappear under the cover of night, hopefully finding their way over the
mound of seaweed, to the sea and not towards the bright lights of Cancun.
Now, if we could have arranged for the Mariachi band to
perform at our house while we sipped wine and watched the turtles hatch - that would have been a five-star night!
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| Hard not to grin when you see baby turtles! |
Hasta Luego
Lawrie & Lynda
2 comments:
Wow! That's amazing! Since that entire beach looked like a minefield earlier this summer, I guess it stands to reason there'd be lots of eggs hatching now. I see lots of baby turtles in your future in the coming weeks!
Hi Becky - tons of nests, so many that some momma turtles are kicking out other momma's eggs when they re-dig the same area. Cheers L
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