Morning Turtle Friday before Sunrise Jan. 24, 2008

About 4:30 in the morning, as we walked the north beach, Gabby the chief biologist came over the radio saying” there’s a morning turtle there’s a morning turtle!.” I’ve heard of a lot of different species of turtles but never heard of a morning turtle. “What is a morning turtle?”
A morning turtle is a leatherback that comes up to nest close to sunrise. The rules on the beach are very strict, absolutely no flash photography at night, in fact no cameras of any kind of camera on the beach at night unless you have made prior arrangements and have a permit. That is not an easy feat! Morning turtles are a rare sight on this beach, this was the 7th one since the nesting season began in October. As a result, the morning turtle brings waves of excitement and a rare opportunity to photograph an adult leatherback.


We went to the house to pick up any of our sleeping team members because we knew this was something we would not want to miss. We drove back to marker 25 and walked to marker 27. There we watched as the beautiful turtle dug her chamber, laid her eggs, covered it, camouflaged the area and returned to the ocean. She seemed to get confused as she got to the shores edge. She dipped a flipper and turned around towards our team, She started walking back and maybe she just wanted to be sure we understood that we should protect her nest. Then she took one more turn and headed off slowly to make her journey out to sea.