Day 3 - Night patrol

Monday, 28^th June 2010, was the first night which we were scheduled to do night patrolling along Telaga Papan, the beach where the World-Wide Fund for nature (WWF) monitors for turtles sightings. There are 2 sections to the beach, Telaga Papan 1(TP1) on the left, and Telaga Papan 2(TP2) on the right.

Setting off from the Pink House at 9pm, we (Jia Wei, Ding Kun and Jason) packed the necessary items which we think is important for the night at the beach. Along with us was one of the WWF interns, Aini. We were driven from the Pink House on a 10 minute ride on River’s land rover to the isolated roads of the beach without any lights along the road. As there were 2 Rangers doing the patrolling, we had to wait for both of them to arrive before setting off for the romantic stroll along the beach. After awhile of interaction with Aini both the Rangers had arrived at the beach and we were introduced to Pak Ali and Pak Leh. We were informed that there were 2 sightings of turtles which came up to lay eggs not long ago and so we set off to TP1, while the other ranger went to patrol along TP2. Supposedly, we thought that it would be a stroll along the beach, but in the end it became a brisk walk along the soft, sandy beach. As we were not used to walking along beaches with such soft sand, often our legs sank into the sand as we walked and had a hard time catching up with both Aini’s and the ranger’s paces.

After a long walk of about 3km, as told by Aini, we finally saw the two landing trails of the turtles, but sadly as both of them came up about the same time, we could only see 1 of the nests. As we reached the nesting site, the turtle had already finished laying its eggs and was sand-bathing itself before it sets off on its journey back into the sea. After about 10 to 15 minutes, the turtle began its journey back to the sea and the ranger dug into her nest for her eggs. With the experience of the ranger, an arm-deep pit was dug out in lesser than 5 minutes and the first eggs were brought out.

Turtle eggs are round and ‘fish ball’ like, and as you can see from the picture above that the eggs are made of a really thin membrane which thus allows any light to shine through.

As we counted the eggs each turtle had laid, we put the eggs nice and slowly into a pail, which after every layer had to be covered with sand in order to protect the eggs at the bottom.

After TP1, we were informed that the route was to walk from TP1 to TP2, to wait and rest, which is 6km, and then walk back to the start point. However, after resting for less than 15min at TP2, we were again informed that there was a sighting at TP1 and we had to walk back to TP1. Halfway through the route back to TP1, we coincidentally bumped into a turtle which had just come up from the sea and onto the shore to lay its eggs. Immediate action was to retreat and re-route our path to walk back to TP1 as we could not disturb and let the turtle sense our presence or else it will not lay its eggs and go back into the sea. We thus continued our walk back to TP1 on the road, which was so much easier to walk on. We had to wait for the turtle to finish digging its pit for laying eggs before we can go up and see her lay her eggs. As we had a long and tiring day, we lay down on the beach and almost instantly falling asleep with the romantic moonlight shining down and the cooling sea breeze blowing at us. Sadly we could not enjoy this but had to continue with the counting of the eggs and move on back to the last turtle which was near the start point. Finally after 5 hours of walking, we had completed our patrolling and hopped on to River’s land rover to transport the eggs back to the hatchery at Penarik Inn to be incubated and was then sent back to the Pink House. Sadly we did not take many photos because we did not bring the camera or the video camera.

Signing off,

Jason