An Almost New Hatchery

Sunday, September 2^nd

Crawl count has been hard the past couple mornings. The tide has been so high that it wipes away most of the nests. However, I think that the high/strong tide has been keeping turtles off the beach as well, which helps to account for the low nest numbers. At night we haven't been seeing many turtles either. Later in the morning, we got more hatchlings. I love day releases because you can get some great pictures of the hatchlings! 

Baby turtle tracks are adorable!

 

The rest of the morning I organized all of the books in the office with some of the other volunteers. I went kind of OCD and sorted them by genre and alphabetically by the last name of the author. We also cleaned all of the shelves. While I was organizing the books, Megan, Ryan, and Sabine finished fixing the small hatchery. It looks great! There are no more holes in the walls or the netting! It is way more secure and usable now, which is great because who knows when the new hatchery will get built. During free time, I spent some time on the tower lying in the sun.

The improved hatchery!

In the afternoon, tMegan and Ryan made a new table that can be used for taking care of sick turtles. They are seriously champs! I can’t believe how quickly, efficiently, and well they build things. I bet the houses they renovate back in Australia are amazing! Later, I went to El Rosario to meet the new hatchery caretaker. His name is Lito and he is only 17, which worries me. I feel like that is a lot of responsibility for a young man who has no experience working with turtles. I guess we will see how he does. 

 Our new table for sick turtles! It is so sturdy!

During the middle of the night, two nests hatched. For the first time, I was able to see the hatchlings come out of the ground. It was really cool! First, the heads pop up and then the flippers pop up. Then, they all kind of step on each other to get out of the nest chamber. Luckily, it was a quiet night on the beach, so we didn’t have to worry about motos during the release.