Today we went grocery shopping.
Just outside the grocery store a couple of ladies set up a food
stand. So naturally, I made a beeline
over to see what was cooking. She was
frying “fish cakes”. I asked for 2, one
for me and one for Tiffany (who I will be helping branch out a little
bit). However, the local next to me
immediately turned around and was like “that is NOT enough! As soon as they hit your mouth you will want
more!” So I doubled our order! She was right, they were YUMMY! Kind of bread-y/fishy/full of spices all at
once. The boys were so jealous of our
find, they ordered some too.
THE EAST COAST!
We drove across the country in about 40 minutes! I didn’t know what to expect of the center of
the island, but I can now tell you it is hill/mountain-y and very lush. We didn’t see any, but you have a decent
chance of seeing green monkeys. The
roads are tiny and a little bumpy. Our caravan of 4 cars (volunteers, friends
of volunteers) gathered at the top of the access to the beach and piled in
Darren’s turbo truck (short bed truck).
About 10 of us squished in the back!
Tight enough to not worry about falling out when off-roading through the
large bumps and holes :) 
We walked the longer south portion (3 miles) of beach and recorded many
recent (and some within the week) leatherback activities!! We also excavated a nest that hatched
probably last night. Sadly, it was a very
unsuccessful nest, most eggs did not hatch.
Leatherbacks are so huge you can lay down in their body pits. By the time we made it back to the starting
point to meet the McGill students at the Bellairs Research Center the sun had
just set. I also lost a sandal :(
The east coast was beautiful and largely undisturbed. In the backdrop of the beach are the lush,
jungle-y hills. However, it was sad to
see soooooo much trash and pollution all over the beach! And since I lost a flip flop (fell out of the
kit I left it in and someone else was carrying), I felt terrible about adding
to all the trash already on the beach.
Anyway, we walked the north stretch of the east coast, where we should
have seen even more activity. We saw
some older nests. We sat down at the end
of the beach for about 45 minutes to give the turtles some time… but still we
did not see any leatherbacks! So we
decided we wanted to go back down the longer beach a little to see if that said
had any activity now that the sun had set.
We hadn’t walked far before we came across hatchlings!!! Sadly, many
were disoriented and we used our red lights to follow their tiny tracks the
best we could. I found one! You have to hold it from the back so that
its strong flippers won’t push your hand off!
In total we found about 12. We
could not however find the nest. So we released
them on the beach and watched them swim away.
Even though we all really wanted to see an adult leatherback we called it
a night and went back up to the cars.
RING RING (imagine the nokia sound)
On the car on the way back, Sandy Lane (Tiger Woods wedding hotel) called
to say a turtle was nesting on the beach in front of their hotels. This happens to be the ONLY call that can’t
wait because they use machines to rake their beach every night and that would
compress the nest. So instead of heading
to bed we went to Sandy Lane to RELOCATE the nest to safer area.
Probably the nicest hotel I have ever walked through… can see why it is
SO expensive. Anyway, woohoo, I located
the nest! We removed the eggs and
started looking for a suitable place to relocate them. Found a darker spot down the beach, lights
can be disorienting for hatchlings and dug out a new nesting chamber (think
like a narrow cylinder, with a larger bowl at the bottom). We made it home in the wee hours of the
morning.
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