She sees Sea Turtles by the Seashore by Maya

Sea Turtles in Sri Lanka

On April 23rd Mom, Dad and I (Maya) went to see turtles! We left our hotel in Tangalle at 8pm and Lucas said that he was too tired and sick to come so we left him behind. We got to the Turtle Watch headquarters at 8:30pm where they work 24/7. In the day time they watch the nests and make sure that nobody (person or animal) comes and steals the eggs!  At night time the workers watch for turtles to come and lay their eggs, then mark where the nests are, and even help gently dig up nests that are trying to hatch! It is a really important beach for turtles!

We learned that there are 7 different species of sea turtles in the entire world and five of those species go to the beach that we were on to lay their eggs. We stood there for about 30 minutes and tried to understand the Turtle Watch guide talk, which was hard with his strong Sri Lankan accent.  He said that we were very lucky because some babies hatched and we would get to see them!  He also said that there was already a turtle on the beach digging her nest to lay eggs.  Finally we walked down to the beach. 

We went down to the beach to see baby turtles ( Olive Ridely species) hatch and struggle to find their way out of their nest and into the water. It was pitch black and we could only use red lights (white lights distract them because they are too bright) so we couldn't see very well but could see the outline of them and we could see that they were dark in colour.  They were about the size of a chicken egg and they were working so hard I wanted to pick them all up and carry them to the water!


The baby Olive Ridley turtles crawling out of their nest
Sadly we had to leave the baby turtles eventually and go see the mother turtle lay her eggs. We walked farther up the beach and we waited and waited on the beach and then our guide said the mama turtle gave up because the sand was too dry and her nest kept caving in.  The rainy season didn't start on time so the sand was not as wet as usual.  We waited longer and then the workers found a turtle in the bush that was stuck! It was a Green Sea Turtle and it got caught in the bush while trying to dig a next.  The workers helped it out and then we watched it go back into the water. It was around 1 and a half meters long and 1 meter wide, and it was really full of eggs, it's back end was swollen.  I thought it was huge and did not expect them to be nearly that big! It took a long time to get back to the water and took a lot of breaks but we watched it go all the way.  It struggled quite a bit!  We waited longer and it got so boring we fell asleep on the beach! Once we woke up we decided we were too tired to watch any more and went back.

I thought the baby turtles were the cutest little things and I could have watched them forever, and the big mama turtle was really cool as well! I would have loved to volunteer but unfortunately we didn't have time.

p.s. it was dark and we couldn't use a flash (since it would scare the turtles) so we could only get pictures when the guide was shining his flashlight on the turtles - it was so dark that most of them didn't turn out
Maya
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