Watch the sea turtles nesting

This has been called a "magical" experience by many and most people watch in awe as a never-ending herd approaches the shore to nest and bury their eggs in the sand. This is truly a nature-lovers delight.

These creatures take 15-50 years to reach re-productive stage, and some of them live to be well over 100 years old! But, the destruction of their open nesting grounds, oceanic pollution, and poaching is slowly exterminating the entire species. Nature-lovers can help and/or donate to help these creatures survive. Organizations have been set up to clean up nesting grounds and clean up the waters surrounding those areas. Visit and watch these marvelous animals and you'll be touched forever.

Read below for an article about sea turtles:
*source: http://photo2.si.edu/turtles/nesting.html

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by Laurie Minor-Penland

The Altantic Green Turtle Chelonia mydas only nests on the beach at night. As she crawls out of the ocean, if she sees any movement or light on the beach , she will turn around and return to the sea without nesting. This is one of the reasons why the species is endangered. Overdevelopment of our coastlines has left the sea turtles with very few nesting grounds.

Tigerin Peare, a graduate research associate from Ohio State University, accompanied me on my quest to photograph the nesting turtles.

We were instant buddies.

Tigerin has a sense of humor like I have never experienced before. She could have us in tears of laughter for hours, and then tell a story about herself, so honest and harsh I would almost be in tears again.

The photographic assignment was a real challenge. The routine went like this:

We would be out on the beach from 10 pm until 2 am looking for turtles. Tigerin knew how to read turtle tracks in the black sand, on the black beach, in the black night. I was just trying to keep from tripping over driftwood. The track of a sea turtle looks just like the print of a monster truck tire rolled out of the sea, straight up the beach, and then turned around and rolled back into the ocean again.

As soon as Tigerin spotted a fresh track, I would hide and wait until she was sure the turtle had finished digging her body pit and was about halfway into laying her more than 100 eggs.

Then we could approach, and even touch, the turtle while she labored.

There she was, laying her eggs, grunting, with "tears" running down her face. Somehow I felt this was a private moment that only Mother Nature was supposed to witness. I took as few pictures as possible.

While watching her labor can be very emotional, her tears are not. The tearing occurs soley because she is on dry land. In her normal habitat, the water washes her eyes regularly.

When she was finished, she covered the nest with sand and made her way back into the ocean. Her body is very heavy on land, and as soon as that first wave crashed into her, I felt the urge to cheer!

The juveniles won't surface from their nest until about 60 days later. That means the Green Sea Turtle travels thousands of miles to return to her origional birthplace and lay her eggs, yet she never sees her young.

During my last night on the beach, it started to pour rain as we walked back. By the time we got to the Peace Corps house, we were covered in black sand and soaking wet. Mary Bell and Jim Kinley (Peace Corps volunteers and wonderful people) laughed and got their cameras out. Mary took this picture of us with my camera.

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