Friday, 10 April 2015 - Giant Leatherback Turtles
Location: Grande Riviere, Trinidad
It took 3 hours to drive all the way from St. Augustine in the west to Grande Riviere in the far east of the islands to watch the Giant Leatherback Turtles nest. With all the twists and turns along mountain paths, shorelines, and small villages, it felt like we were going to Wonderland or some magical place that we needed to be lost to be able to find.
Actually, it was magical.
I could not capture it properly on camera because it had been so late and so dark. You can only use a red light to go turtle watching - the turtles are led by the moonlight - so there were barely any lights along the beach. It was pitch dark and the waves crashing onto the shore made the experience almost frightening.
Then, I looked up to the night sky, and my breath was absolutely taken away. In my 21+ years, I had never seen so many stars in one spot. The entire sky was covered in tiny twinkling (and yes, they were really twinkling!) spots of light. We could see the moon bright and full, the North Star, Big Dipper, Little Dipper, and even shooting stars!
We saw the universe blanketing us, and suddenly I felt so small. At the same time though, I felt honored. How many people in the world get to see this? If I stayed back on-campus, sure I would have the luxuries attached to going to a privileged liberal arts college, but none of the luxuries can compare to experiencing the beauty of the natural world in all it’s glory. Not polluted or hidden behind the artificial.
The turtles themselves were a marvel. Giant Leatherback Turtles have been around since the time of the dinosaurs, and we were told that they live to be very old and typically travel across many seas and oceans. Yet, when it is time to nest, a female Leatherback will always return to the place she was born in.
A Leatherback Turtle egg. Unfortunately, this little guy/girl isn’t going to make it.
These turtles are absolutely humongous, and dozens of them crawl out of the water onto the beach at Grande Riviere (and other nesting areas), dig their nests in the sand, and lay hundreds of eggs. It was fascinating to see the process, but again, almost frightening. In the darkness, it was easy to run into these giant turtles without noticing them until you’ve made impact. We had to be careful maneuvering around so as not to scare them back into the water. But once a female Leatherback starts laying her eggs, she falls into a trance. So we also did get an opportunity to pet one!
A female Giant Leatherback Turtle nesting. She was about 4-5 feet in length.
Since these turtles are “leatherback”, they do not have hard shells. Touching her head and her shell, she almost did not feel real. I know what leather feels like (as most people probably), so it wasn’t a foreign feeling when I touched her. Watching her lay there, heaving in a breath every now and again, I almost felt like she wasn’t really alive. She looked almost animatronic.
But I thought to myself: this is perhaps the realest thing in the world that I could experience. The stars in the sky, mothers trying to give birth to their young - why did the “real” feel so “surreal”?
Perhaps I need to take more time to appreciate what the universe has to offer, and spend time discerning what life actually entails. Because life isn’t just about making a career, buying a house, retiring, and the other stages in between. Life is all around - and there is more to life than how we humans choose to define it.
