Lang Tengah Turtle Watch – Swimming with Another Hawksbill Turtle and Hatchling Rising – Day 6

Every morning we have monitor lizards crawling through camp, close to the nests where they pick up on the scent of the eggs. Since Ellie the green turtle’s eggs were brought to Turtle Bay, our private beach, we have been waking up earlier in shifts in order to scare away monitor lizards trying to dig under the mesh protecting the nests. This morning there was a monitor lizard with an egg in his mouth. We scared him off by walking towards him and continued to stay close to the nests throughout the day, as tonight a hatching was expected.

Ellie's nest we dug and filled with her eggs on Turtle Bay, Lang Tengah.

We went snorkeling - one person stayed behind to watch for monitor lizards on Turtle Bay - in Karang Nibung again and came across one of the most beautiful Hawksbill turtles I have ever seen. This one didn’t mind us swimming close to her. She didn’t stay with us for long, like Helan, the other hawksbill turtle we saw this week, but just being able to see her among all the other beautiful fish and bright coral, moving her flippers gracefully, made my day. You can tell this is a hawksbill turtle because of its serrated shell. Compared to a green turtle, hawksbill turtles are significantly smaller, too.

The beautiful hawksbill turtle swimming with us in Karang Nibung, Lang Tengah.

After the snorkel, the rest of the day was spent on camp scaring away monitor lizards and enjoying books. I lay in the hammock by the beach and continued to read The Secret History by Donna Tartt, a book which I highly recommend. With the 30C + weather every day, sunscreen is essential. Spending fifteen minutes out in the sun without any protection can burn the shoulders and make sleeping in the rough beds very uncomfortable.

View of Turtle Bay, Lang Tengah from the hammock.

When I returned to camp, Jamil, a D’Coconut employee who is very friendly with our camp, was sitting on the picnic bench beside the kitchen with a belt of tools and a coconut. He created a hole in the coconut with a knife and continued to cut away excess coconut around the hole for the ring to be at least five millimeters thick. Using all these tools, he refined the ring and placed it under a flame to give it a dark color, and in the end he covered the ring in candle wax to make it look shiny. Jamil kindly gave me the ring to keep.

Jamil burning the coconut ring to give it a dark color.

At night, all of us sat out by the hawksbill nest which was ready to hatch, with our rice dinner and drinks. We turned off the lights and noticed eventually a little mound above the nest. Checking now and again with red lights, we watched with excitement as every minute, the little flippers of a hawksbill hatchling would twitch. After about fifteen minutes, the baby hawksbill was out of the sand and looking around. He wasn’t walking directly to the ocean, so one of us stood by the water and shined the red light towards the hatchling in order to guide him towards waves. I feel as though my bucket list has been crossed off here on Lang Tengah. I swam with turtles, witnessed one lay eggs and saw a hatchling rise! And the hatchling was particularly beautiful with his bumpy shell and little face. I hope a shark or a grouper fish doesn’t get to him! Hopefully he will be that one-in-one-thousand turtles that survives.

The baby hatchling leaving its nest.

Hatchlings follow the current when they make it into the ocean and eventually end up reaching the Sargasso Sea, a region of the North Atlantic Ocean where four currents meet. There they munch on sea grasses and algae. Laying turtles actually return and lay eggs on same beaches they hatched in, which I am fascinated by!

Thank you for reading about my sixth day here on Lang Tengah, Steemit! I hope you’re enjoying the details and footage I’m providing of the turtle watch!