Tortuga!

Last night I had the late patrol from midnight to 4am. I was tired before we left because everyone went to town for dinner. I got back in time to take about a 30 min cat nap. That's okay because my night was incredible. We started out on south beach and made a stop at the vivero (the hatchery) to see if any nests had hatched - they hadn't. We did not stay long and began our walk down the beach. We had been walking for a little while when we came across turtle tracks headed up towards the vegetation and away from the water. Then we found a tortuga (turtle) sitting in a bed she had made. We tagged and measured her before she returned to the water. I didn't want to disturb her and take a picture with a flash. Here is my attempt using a red light on my headlamp. 

You can sort of see her head in the bottom left corner and her left front flipper and part of her shell. Sea turtles cannot pull their head or flippers inside their shell. After she left her bed, we searched for a nest using the method that poachers use. We stuck a stick in the ground in various locations seeing where it goes in the deepest. We don't know what happened but we found no best with eggs. We saw other footprints so one thought is that poachers took her eggs as she layed them. She also may not have layed a nest. 

Our night continued and as we walked we found two more sets of tracks and consequently two more nests. One nest was an Green Turtle (known as a black turtle on the pacific coast) with no eggs. The other was an Olive Ridley nest with over 100 eggs. It was awesome. We put them in a bag and took them to the hatchery where we dug a nest and carefully placed them. In around 50 days,the eggs will mature and hatch. It was pretty awesome to know that I helped a nest get to a safe place. Only one in a thousand turtle babies will survive and make it to adulthood. It's crazy. We left the hatchery around 3:30. We had a little time to go to north beach. We crossed the mouth of the lagoon  - it was up to my waist. Good thing north beach is short. We walked to the end and back in a little over 30 minutes and headed for home. I was hungry and exhausted but crawled into bed. I woke up to gorgeous blue skies and although I technically had the morning off I went to do beach cleanup with everyone and enjoy the sun. Here are a few pics...

A plane coming in for landing. 

This is the bridge we have to cross to get to north beach. 

It's pretty cool but a little scary especially in the dark or when it is windy.