This week has been full of amazing experiences.
Let’s look at a normal day in the life of a Turtle conservation volunteer:
7pm: shift #1 starts
11pm: shift #1 ends – shift #2 begins
4am: shift #2 ends
7-8am: breakfast (optional, lots of people slept through it.)
12-1pm: Lunch (the more popular first meal of the day, depending on your shift the previous night)
1-6pm: hang out, read, sleep, rest, snack, beach time, pool time, beach clean up etc
6-7pm: Dinner!
Do it all over again!
Now what does a shift consist of? Well that’s where the turtles, long nights, stary skies and the bioluminescent phytoplankton come in!
Our shifts consisted of walking along the beaches looking for turtles by moonlight (white light from flashlights scare them away and so is strictly forbidden! Only red light is allowed) they’re pretty easy to find considering their size. I can’t say what an average turtle size was, but I remember one turtles mesurements: 84cm by 76cm! Needless to say, when they scurry up the shore towards the vegetation, they leave quite the tracks (honestly kind of looks like a huge car tire track!). We would follow those tracks, find the turtles then record a lot of information about them. The sheet we filled out included their size, their ID tag number, where they were, what time they arrived, started digging a nest, starting laying eggs, covered their nest and went back to sea. Trick is, we have to collect the eggs when they are being laid. Yeah, we had to steal the eggs! But it was for the better, our goal is to take the eggs and burry them somewhere safer where racoons cannot follow the scent and locals (who eat turtle eggs – and sometimes will follow volunteers to find where they burry the eggs to then dig them up) cannot find them.
One night, Cheridyn actually walked right by one of the poachers, our guide that night knew who he was! But they can’t do anything.
Because we have to wait till the mother turtle is actually laying the eggs, we did a lot of sitting around, star gazing and talking.
Just two weeks ago I was talking to Cheridyn about bioluminescent phytoplankton, and then it was there!!! This type of plankton lights up when it’s moved, I can’t explain it in detail, but the water lights up when the wave crashes and it was one of the most beautiful things!
Over the course of the couple nights we saw countless shooting stars, saw many different phases of the moon, walked countless times the length of the beach, some of us aided in tagging the turtles (which involves tackling it sometimes!) and avoiding as many different types of bites as possible.
Though the shifts were long, we were exhausted and the food was quite typical (one more plate of gallo pinto and I might have stopped eating!), it was a wonderful experience.
And our groups fun dancing and singing mid-week lifted the spirits!
Shout out to Jesse and his pink leo!
We’re off to Roatan tomorrow, you’ll all be hearing from us soon.
Love,
Itza crew
Helen and Emilie