Turtle Patrol in Puerto Rico

When I lived on the eastern side of Puerto Rico, I was part of a conservation group that monitored the beaches for sea turtle nests. At first light, volunteers walked the beach daily looking for turtle tracks leading to turtle nests. The nests were blocked off with orange fencing and signs warning people not to step in the area. Another job was to monitor the beaches at night, and if you were lucky, observe hatching sea turtles make their way to the ocean and assist any that went in the wrong direction as they often did when following human-made lights versus the moon.

I never saw sea turtles as part of the organization, but I did get to see a nest hatch. At around 2 p.m. on a Sunday, Cody and I walked the beach home from lunch, and almost stepped on something moving across the sand. We leapt back, frightened at what the squirming things in the sand were and how they could hurt us. A beat later we realized they were baby sea turtles!

They appear to be endangered hawksbill sea turtles based on their oval shell and beak. We watched the babies crawl from their nest to the ocean and stood guard to warn anyone else walking by, which no one did. All of the babies made it out of the nest and into the ocean. I wonder how many are still alive, since aroud only 1 in 1,000 make it to adulthood?

This is what a turtle nest looks like after the babies crawl out. The mother digs a whole, lays eggs, and buries them. When they hatch the whole opens and stays that way until the sand overcomes it again.

The beak is visible on this baby.

They are tiny compared to the footprint.

The tracks this baby makes are exactly what the mother’s tracks look like. A leatherback mother can leave tracks that look like they were made by an all-terrain vehicle!