A lot to learn...

Today is my 1st day off, woke up at 9am, I did not have to wake up at 4:30am like I usually do when I have to do a turtle walk on the beach, but you can't sleep any longer either...I guess it may be due to the temperature...although I do have a fan in my room...I don't know.  TODAY is my day to relax, take pictures, and maybe take out the kayak for a little ride on the canal :) We have a dog here at the station, her name is maggie, I may just give her a bath also, cause she's a little stinky!! Maggie is no regular dog, she's the doorbell of the biological station.  If there are any intruders, she can sense it before anyone else can, be it [people or other animals...she's always with us hanging out at the communal area too, she's the sweetest that maggie :D

I have been so far on 3 or 4 turtle walks on the beach, they've taken in average between 5-6.5 hours including walking and digging time when we did find turtle nests that needed checking.  Up until yesterday, we had only found nests that were older, hatched but didn't make it, they were either poached, predated, or drowned with the high tides. We have found nests with rotten eggs, undevelopped little turtles inside, and even eggs with maggots in them.  All eggs at hatched nests need to be opened if they didn't by the way....so we find lots of gross stuff :S and the smell!!!! ohhhh what we do for the little baby turtles....
Turtles come on the beach to nest, and once they close the chamber and leave it, it then takes around 2 months for the eggs to hatch...we keep track of all of that, we survey all their activity, everynight, per species.
Yesterday, I walked the beach with Danai, one of the other interns, and we had to check 10 old nests (due to hatch), plus check for any new mother turtle tracks in order to keep count of them for when the hatching time comes....we have to flag those nests, so that we can find them with the GPS later on.  Well, lucky for Danai and I, one of the older nests that was due to hatch made it! we got to the nest and I started excavating to check for eggs.  Leatherback turtles' nests can be over a metre in depth...imagine me with my short arms trying to reach the bottom! I was so excited when I felt the little flippers moving between my fingers, it was amazing!!! then I knew at least some where alive.
We found 75 live little turtles in that nest, and only a couple in underdevelopped stages that didn't make it and died in the egg....but 75 babies!!!! we took them to the waves in groups of 10 keeping watch on the nest at all times...seeing those little turtles start to slowly wake up and move was incredible....then they became really active once on the sand and pushed themselves with their little flippers all the way into the water....sometimes, they were pushed back to shore by the tide, but we always waited until they all made it to the ocean.  We did loose one little baby though...I was so mad...a hawk came flying from a tree very fast and we missed it...he took one of the baby turtles and flew away with it :(

Well, this was my 1st experience finding live turtles during training, and I will have many more to come..but it was the best!!! It's a very cool feeling to know that you are giving the turtles a chance to live, cause otherwise, without our intervention, the turtles would most likely have been taken by dogs hawks or tourists that don't know any better.
I am currently being trained to become a patrol leader, so then I will be training the volunteers that arrive in July, showing them all the methods, do's and dont's of this amazing conservation job.