Man Plans, Turtle Laughs

Oh schedules. What a wonderful and lovely idea. And oh how silly.

When you are dealing with wild animals, it turns out that all expectations go out the window. You were supposed to be camping for six days at one beach? Well, too bad, a turtle is being difficult and now you need to go to a different beach for three nights instead. Don't plan too far ahead, for the turtle is a mischievous creature and enjoys making our lives far more confusing than we would like.

This has been the trend of the season, apparently. Every time our poor leader tries to put together a schedule based on expected turtle activity, nothing goes according to plan. Either it's a green turtle nesting on one of our beaches (which never, ever had happened before this summer- they are supposed to nest in the far northern Hawaiian islands), or a turtle false nesting seven days in a row, or a momma going missing for weeks at a time to appear, quite randomly, at a totally different beach. This week was a perfect example of how we can never know what to expect when it comes to our turtles.

Originally, I was supposed to go on two three day trips in a row, the first to a beach called Kamehame, the second to a beach called Kaloa. I got to Kamehame on an exciting night, a momma turtle was due for her next nest (they lay every 20 days or so). My cohorts were a fun pair of kids, we'll call them Judo and Roomie. Both of them are pretty new too, and we were all very eager to see our turtle lay some eggs. So, same as usual, we spent the night on the sand, walking the full length of the beach every hour, but no such luck, our momma did not appear. To be honest, I didn't blame her, the waves were insane and she would have gotten knocked around like an underwater hockey puck.

We didn't worry though, the high surf was due to settle down and momma still had two nights before we were scheduled to leave. Plenty of time, right?

The next day, sure enough, we found our girl at 8 pm, a time she seemed to like from her other times nesting this summer. We watched, at first excited, then gradually perplexed as the turtle kept moving from rock to rock, rather than climbing up to the foliage where she needed to lay her nest. Then we got worried. If a turtle lays a nest in a place that gets covered by the surf, her eggs will get inundated and probably die. Even worse, the whole nest could get washed away. So we tried to coax her over to the plants but ended up freaking her out. She abandoned us and ran away to the sea, leaving us completely crushed. We swore not to upset her again.

The next night was our last and we were beginning to get nervous. We set up on a big rock near where she'd come up the night before and waited, but not for long. Our momma came up again, early and on a mission. However, that mission, it turned out, was not laying a nest. She made straight for our rock and came up right beside us, mere inches away. We scarcely breathed, trying to turn ourselves into rocks by the power of thought alone, determined not to frighten her. Apparently, it worked, but perhaps a little too well. Instead of heading for the bushes to dig herself a nest, our turtle clambered up over the rock, up above our heads and began to teeter.

Now, when a turtle begins to teeter above you, you have two options. Either you stay there and when she falls get crushed into jelly between the turtle and the lava rock, or you run like hell. Roomie and I chose the latter, and not a moment too soon- the turtle came crashing down the rock a second after I lept away, all 200 pounds of her landing with a hard thump on the very spot I'd just vacated. Then, after catching her breath, she turned towards us and stepped forward to fall the remaining two feet to the sand where she landed face first and very disgruntled. Perhaps a little embarassed, and more than a little upset, she took off for the sea again, leaving behind three rather overwhelmed turtlers who'd just seen their lives flash before their eyes.

Our three days were up and no one was scheduled to come to this beach. What were we to do? Our leader scrambled to come up with a new plan, and ended up putting me right back at the same beach with three new people, Whisper, Princess and Pebbles. This was an interesting choice, given that Princess and Pebbles are none too fond of each other, yet in such a crunch, there was little else she could do.

Again we staked out the beach, this time fairly far from the rock, in case our crazy momma decided to go rock climbing again. Hours passed, we became certain she would never come up. Yet at 11 PM when we scoured the beach for signs of activity, we came across the strangest set of tracks. It appeared that our turtle had dragged herself out of the water on the complete opposite end of the beach where absolutely no vegetation grew, shuffled forward into the cliff face and then skirted it, occasionally headbutting rocks and the cliff side in her agitation. Her tracks arrowed off for the water after running along most of the cliff. We'd missed her and again, she hadn't even tried to nest. This was getting a little ridiculous.

Night five in the field and I was becoming worried I wouldn't actually get to see this turtle nest at all, even though she'd come up the last three nights. Perhaps she'd just gone crazy, or enjoys messing with us. Maybe she didn't even have a clutch of eggs and was just visiting the beach for amusement. Maybe she was drunk or high on hallucinagetic... er... sponges? Nevertheless, we crunched into as small a space as possible, doing our best to keep an eye on the beach but not block her access to the vegetation.

Around her typical time, we saw a turtle emerge from the surf. We got excited, but then the turtle went back into the water. Maybe it was a green turtle? They normally like to lay out on the beach at night and confuse us when we're scouring for Hawksbills. Again, perhaps ten minutes later, a turtle rose from the ocean, paused and then dipped back into the sea. We were beginning to get suspicious that she was playing with us, enjoying making us sweat.

She did this once more before finally emerging from the water and making her way up the beach, right for us. We froze, thought 'rock, rock, rock' and thankfully she veered away before I had to run for it again to avoid another potential turtle injury. And then, glory hallelujah, she finally got to the bushes and began to dig. And dig. And dig.

Our persistence worked, and she laid for us. It was totally thrilling to be there, watching her do this odd dance that has somehow kept the species alive for so long before now. Yet then, after laying beautifully, our turtle still had a surprise in store for us. Maybe she misjudged how many eggs she had, maybe she was tired and didn't dig deep enough, but the nest chamber was too shallow and the eggs came to the top. This meant that when she started to cover the nest, she accidentally dug up the eggs near the surface. As she began crushing her own eggs, Pebbles decided it was time to step in. With a powerful heave, the two of us shoved her off her nest. This perplexed her for a moment, but then she went on burying her 'nest' while we covered the real one with our much less capable hands. Silly girl didn't even notice that we'd pushed her around but, well, if you were a turtle, would you expect something like that to happen?

But in the end, I did get to see a turtle nest, and that was worth everything, even near death by turtle crushing. For the win.