Turtle Jump-Up!

Nearby, two erudite-looking volunteer naturalists stood by with watchful eyes. They had daily strolled along the beaches, alert for any sign of recent activity. In a furious flailing of tiny flippers, the hatchlings raced for the ocean, using an inborn compass to find their way: some say it is crawling away from the land’s higher horizon that directs them; others say it’s because the water is brighter than the shore. If a turtle straggler wandered past the scarlet ribbons beneath the feet of the tourists, one of the naturalists gently prodded it back on course. At the water’s edge, the same hungry gull swooped down for supper, but the crowd succeeding in frightening it away with a resounding clap of hands or an impassioned yell. Finally, all the turtles became waterborne, each successive wave having pulled them into the ocean.
After this trek to the ocean, the hatchlings will ride ocean currents up the Atlantic coast, spending from three to five years in the deep waters: They are rarely seen in these early stages of life. As carnivores, they subsist on pelagic crustaceans like squid, jellyfish, and algae. Later, when returning to the shallow lagoons as immature juveniles, they will settle into a more herbivorous, shallow-water lifestyle, feeding on sea-grasses and seaweed, which is about when we see them beneath our boats.
To breed, a female turtle may journey roughly 2,600 kilometers between her feeding grounds and Aruba, the original nesting site. Individual green turtles have been seen as far north as Canada, as far south as the southern tip of Africa and

t was time for my daily swim. Gazing into turquoise waters as clear as cellophane, I peered into the depths for any hidden predators, and was surprised to see a three-inch-long, green turtle hatchling torpedoing off the beam of Scud, our 44-foot St. Francis catamaran. Its tiny flippers paddled with grace, little ripples of water spinning off its tail. A threatening screech came from overhead, and I gazed up in horror to see a seagull bee-lining for the little fella. My heart pounded in my throat. Shaking my fist at the feathery beast, I shouted, “No!” And then I was soaring in mid-air, racing against the gull and time itself. To do what exactly? Interfere with nature? Who really ponders scientific questions at a time like this? Gulls aren’t endangered; sea turtles are! Though, as luck would have it, both gull and turtle had vanished when I surfaced. I’ll never know what happened to my little reptilian friend.
We were anchored off Oranjestad in Aruba,the Netherland Antilles: roughly 475 nautical miles due west of Grenada or a mere 15 nautical miles due north of the Paraguaná Peninsula of Venezuela. Ashore, my husband, Peter, and I had joined a crowd of onlookers on the beach. Together, we all gazed at an endearing, hilarious clutch of 85 green turtle hatchlings. They were scrambling out of a tiny hole in the sand, writhing and tumbling over each other in a bubbling mass of flippers and little heads. Scarlet ribbons cut a swath of sand directly to the beach, marking their “runway” to the water’s edge, as if some Hollywood movie starlet’s début. I half imagined Julia Roberts to come striding down!

due to being an extremely cloudy day, during the low light of a late afternoon sun: it was 6:00PM.The only known predators of the adult green turtle are humans and sharks. Many sea turtles die in fishing nets without TEDs (turtle exclusion devices), and others are killed when they eat ocean garbage, all too easily dropped over the side of boats. The pretty black-and-yellow plates on the back of hawksbill sea turtles were long sought for tortoiseshell jewelry and combs. Other sea turtles are also killed to make leather products. In Southeast Asia and China, turtles are both eaten and used in traditional medicine. A greatly increased Asian turtle trade in recent years has brought many formerly common species to the brink of extinction in this region.

The good news is, in the Caribbean, private resorts are making concerted efforts at conserving their beaches for returning female turtles: tourists want to see them. Eco-tourism saved the nesting beach of Tortuguero in Costa Rica. During the 1950s, thousands of eggs were harvested, either sold for money or eaten as food by poor villagers. When the Tortuguero National Park was formed, an entire village rose from the once deserted beach. Meaningful jobs had replaced the lucrative sale of turtle eggs, once a major source of income for the villagers.
Eyeing the last hard-shell hatchling enter the ocean waters, I wished my little friend good luck and happy endings. Now, whenever a turtle surfaces and flashes me those liquid brown eyes, my heart swells; I feel blessed. I know one more adult turtle has made it back. Looking at such beauty in the water, I vow to do my best at conservation by educating others, boycotting shops that sell tortoiseshell items, as well as restaurants that sell turtle meat.

Argentina, and even Ascension Island in the mid-Atlantic ocean (you can only get there by fin or boat!). Female turtles return to the same nesting beach to lay their eggs, laying not more than 100 to a clutch, returning every two to four years after breeding. In Aruba or other Caribbean waters, nesting season isfrom June until September, when the weather is hot and moist for incubation. To prepare her nest, a female turtle drags herself up a wide beach above the high-tide line (to avoid flooding), to dig a hole with hind flippers, and deposit her clutch. Hind flippers cover them back with sand, and she returns to the sea. After around 45 to 75 days, the eggs hatch, usually under the darkness of the night to avoid predators. It was unusual to see these hatchlings during daylight hours. The naturalist on site told us it was probably