Aye, Sea Turtles!

Again, we were up at literally 1:30, but this time, to go see the baby turtle release. I slept all the way to Padre Island, our destination. We went to the dock and listened to the ranger speech. The rangers on the beach gave us the “ready” signal and the crowd slowly inched forward to the beach.

There were 4 people holding the corners of a net to protect the turtles from hungry birds. Others were holding long white poles with orange streamers to scare away seagulls and pelicans. The ranger in charge, Dr. Donna Shaver, Chief of Sea Turtle Science and Recovery, placed a cooler on the sand under the net, opened it, and began placing turtles in a pile on the sand in front of her. The point of this is to make it as realistic as possible, and they want the turtles to imprint on the beach so they know which beach to go back to if they survive. There were 80 turtles being released, and they were all groggy. Not one of them was moving. Then, one turtle hesitantly began moving tentative flippers. 3 others soon followed him and began leaving tiny turtle tracks in the sand. It was about 30 feet from the pile to the ocean, and the baby turtles could only move 3 or 4 little flipper steps before having to rest.

There were clumps of seaweed on the beach as well as little sand piles and crab holes, providing many obstacles for the baby turtles to overcome, plus the added heartbreak of the waves pushing the turtles back. When they made it to the water, there would be even more dangers.

The four turtles continued taking small baby steps closer to the ocean, until they were almost there. Waves engulfed them, and they began to move quickly, the number of steps they took getting bigger and the number and size of their resting time was gradually diminished. Soon, a wave came and the first turtle began to slide into the ocean, flapping his flippers wildly. The other three turtles soon followed him in. The sight of those four turtles getting in to the ocean must have encouraged them, because soon more turtles began the slow journey to the ocean. Some flipped over, and were stuck flailing on the ground until a ranger flipped them or they righted themselves. Others hit clumps of seaweed and had to crawl over them. It took a long time, but soon more turtles went flapping into the ocean, getting flipped and swirled by the waves until you could only see little heads bobbing up and down in the water. When the last little turtle had finally crawled into the water, we clapped and left.

On the way to the car, we found a giant twisted hunk of blue and white metal with little barnacles all over it. The barnacles were sticking out tiny brown appendages. As part of our annual “turtling” we always stop at Krispy Kreme on the way home. Heartbreak and devastation awaited us this year as we discovered that they had gone out of business! We stopped at a donut place called Donut Palace. I got a glazed donut and it was amazing – not Krispy Kreme extraordinary amazing, but still really good. When we got home the first thing we did was get in our beds and sleep.

Click on the beartube link on the side for turtle videos!