Seaturtles and Rum

So off we go to Bundaberg, home of the 123 year old sugar cane RUM distillery.  You can see from the photo that Dwayne has come home..... 

So also in Bundy (everyplace in Australia is shortened and a Y is added.  Strange) there is the largest (on the Eastern coast of Australia anyway) turtle rookery.  It is in a conservation park called Mon Repos (which is french for My Rest, french will come into this story shortly).  So you sign up at the tourist center in town for a night time visit.  The beach is closed and there are lots of signs that indicate this and it is open only for guided groups of people.  During the months of November to about April the marine turtles (about 95% loggerheads) come to the beach and lay eggs and then the little turtles hatch about 3 months or so (dependent on the weather) later.  So you go at 7PM but with no guarantee that turtles will show to see if you get to watch the females lay some eggs.  You are assigned a group, we were in number 2 that has about 60 people, about half being kids.  They have volunteers and rangers on the beaches spotting the turtles.  They call back to the center and the groups can go down to the beach.  It is pitch black now but the moon is out.


 The turtles do not like being disturbed while they are digging their egg chambers.  You can watch from behind because they cannot see you but you cannot turn on any lights.  So we get the call and the group heads out.  The ranger makes sure that she is digging and we can watch.  Then about 5 minutes into this up in the woods there is a very bright light suddenly appears.  No its not aliens, its a stupid french guy who decided to come to the beach on his own and look for turtles.  He claims he did not know or choose to ignore the rules.  Guess what happened?  The turtle got frightened and stopped digging and went back into the water.  Stupid French guy!  So we start to walk back and the ranger has called back and lets the station know.  They tell him there is another turtle not too far away that a volunteer is watching.  They have been monitoring and tagging turtles here since the late 1960s and since they start to lay eggs when they reach 30, some of the ones coming in are tagged.  They come back to the beach they were born at much like salmon when they spawn.  So off we go to watch turtle number 2.  She is in the process of laying her eggs when we get there.  So her number one priority is the eggs and so she does not mind 60 people gawking at her.  They find a number on her, this is her second clutch of eggs this year.  She is about 35 years old, 97 cm long, weighs about 100 kilos and that night she laid 151 eggs.  The average is 130 eggs.  Ok so how do we know how many eggs she laid?

We know because the ranger said even though she built her nest high on the beach.  It is supposed to be a nasty storm season this year.  So, these could be destroyed in a storm.  So, while she was busy covering them up, he went higher up and dug another chamber.  Once she went back to the ocean, he dug out the eggs and guess what?  We got to move them.  Ok, how cool is that and how often will you get to help out some turtles?  I did not think anything could top snorkelling on the reef, this did.