A Night of Terror!

Dawn - five minutes after six in the morning

Exhausted.  Her scraped and bleeding limbs drifting uselessly in the waves, Teresa lay on her back, unable to move.  Her mouth and nose covered by the shallow water, she struggled to breathe.  She had lain in this painful position for hours. 

In the dark of the night, Teresa had mistakenly stepped off a rocky ledge, landing hard on the beach below.  She knew she was in trouble, big trouble.  Dawn was breaking, and soon the hot tropical sun would bake against her body, slowly killing her if the lack of oxygen didn’t do her in first. If she could just get one decent breath of air, perhaps she could survive a bit longer. Just a little bit longer.

Turtle flipped over here

A noise!  She heard a noise that sounded like two voices with a background of sharp, excited yips. Trembling with fear, Teresa again futilely twitched her limbs.

“Oh god, she's alive!” shouted a voice.

“Awesome”, I exclaimed, “let’s flip her over!”

“How the heck do you flip a large turtle?” asked my neighbour Amy, with a bemused smile on her face.

“Carefully, very carefully!”  I laughed, set my camera down on the rocky outcropping, and ran to the turtle. 

Shaking her head at the absurdity of the situation, Amy released the leash of her young puppy, Bosch and joined me.

“Okay,” she said, “on three.  One, two, three!”  And we flipped a large, heavy turtle right-side up.

Different tortuga, Gaspar helping her dig a hole

With a flurry of splashing flippers, Teresa the Tortuga struggled to turn around – paddling, pushing, soaking both Amy and me with a slurry of seawater and sand. We were euphoric, laughing and shouting happily when the turtle managed to speed off into the deeper water, and away from her night of torment and terror.  

I had mistakenly put my camera too far out of reach, and by the time I grabbed it and pointed it at the fleeing tortuga, she had gone. Damn! The three dogs, Amy’s two dogs, Bowser and Bosch, and Sparky were very quiet.  They stared at the departing creature, unable to comprehend how it would swim out that far, that fast. 

Teresa the Tortuga - swimming to freedom

Tortuga flipping is not my normal routine at five minutes before dawn. Sparky and I usually do his first walk of the day at half-past six along the sidewalk to the gas station and back, fifteen or twenty minutes tops, and then it’s time for morning coffee.  

This morning I woke up at half-past five and decided to head out early.  Because it is turtle nesting season, I tucked a small camera into my pocket, hoping maybe, just maybe, I would get lucky with photos of a mama turtle laying eggs. 

Tortuga looking for the perfect spot

From mid-May to October, the female turtles typically arrive after sunset and search for a deep stretch of sand, digging one, two or even three test holes before settling on a location and depositing over a hundred eggs.  

The turtles are normally gone well before dawn; however, occasionally a female will still be laying eggs at sunrise, having spent too long searching for a perfect nesting site during the night. 

Baby turtles about to be released

Before the creation of the turtle conservation program and the Isla Mujeres turtle farm, the chances of a turtle egg hatching and the new babies surviving were minuscule. Dogs, birds, and humans all preyed on the eggs.  If the eggs did hatch, then large fish and more sea birds would gobble up the delicious hatchlings as they dashed for the ocean. 

Every year, the Isla Mujeres turtle farm gathers the eggs, then raises and releases up to ninety thousand baby turtles.  It’s a wondrous sight.  

Wet and sandy turtle flipper

On this morning, Sparky and I did our usual amble along to the gas station, and then I decided to walk back home along the beach. About halfway home, I noticed our neighbour Amy was out with their new puppy, Bosch, giving him a chance to have a morning pee. Bosch was excitedly barking at something in the ocean, so Sparky and I headed over to see what the excitement was all about.

As Amy and I stood discussing how sad it was to see a dead turtle, and wondering if she had been hit by a boat propeller, the turtle twitched her flippers.  And that’s when the fun started. 

By the time Teresa the Tortuga had successfully swum away, our laughter had alerted Amy’s husband, Luis, that something was up. He popped out onto their patio for a look, but the excitement was over.

We can only hope that Teresa the Tortuga survives to return, again and again, to this beach.  

Sea Turtles mating

But, she will likely have an aversion to that particular stretch of sand where she back-flipped off a rocky ledge onto the sand below. 

While she was struggling to survive, her mate was probably drifting offshore at South Point, wondering where she was and why his breakfast was late. 

Hasta Luego

Lynda, Lawrie, Sparky, Thomas

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Launching of the baby turtles, Isla Mujeres, Mexico!

Some of the kids who came to release turtles

Mayhem is the word that comes to mind while watching a hundred or more little kids rushing to release over 6000 baby sea turtles into the surf.  

Wednesday evening was the last scheduled release of the day-old hatchlings, this one held at the beach across from the Guadalupana neighbourhood. It was a very sociable event with a number of our local and gringo friends participating.

Arrival of baby turtles at release area

About a quarter past six in the evening, the baby turtles arrived from the tortugranja (turtle farm) via large plastic tubs transported on the back of a flatbed truck. The heavy tubs were then carried to the beach and lined up along the sand just out of the covetous reach of the little kids, and bigger kids like me. In an attempt to minimize the number of predators prowling for a feast of turtle sushi, we had to wait until sundown before the turtles were distributed for release.

Hard to see in the semi-dark!

And then it happened. The official in charge deemed it time to start the release. Every kid with a bucket was given a double handful of squirming baby turtles to release onto the sand, hopefully pointed in the right direction - towards the water. 

They are so very small, and about the colour of dried seaweed. It was extremely difficult in the deepening twilight not to step on the tiny shapes racing across the sand to the ocean. Once they reached the ocean, two-foot waves tossed a number of them unceremoniously back on the sand. 

Big wet kid, releasing turtles

I can't imagine how terrifying this whole procedure must be for a baby turtle.

 

The thought kept flickering through my brain while we watched the mayhem – at this point in their lives, these turtles are about one inch tall, and the waves are about twelve inches high. Isn’t that equivalent to a human swimming in twelve-foot waves? 

The Frigate birds, gulls, and other predator birds will feast on them come daylight. Others will be gulped down by underwater predators - like fish food sprinkled on the surface of an aquarium.  No wonder the survival rate for turtles is approximately 1 in 1000. 

After about fifteen years have passed, those that do survive will return to this area to mate in the waters off the south end of Isla Mujeres. 

Lots of interested folks watching the event

The females will return to the beaches where they started their journey and lay a hundred or more eggs in deep sand, before heading back to sea.  

The males will never return to land.  They are a fascinating species.

Hasta luego, Lynda & Lawrie

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Isla Mujeres Mystery Series

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Death in the Vineyards Mysteries

The Adventures of Thomas and Sparky