My name is Léa,
and I am from France. I came here on the 13th January to do my
internship for my second year of my masters, to study the nesting behaviour
process of the hawksbill turtles. I will stay at the office until the middle of
June. So now, it will be me who will continue to write the blog.
When I first
arrived for the two first weeks I was at the office in Beau Vallon and for the
past three weeks I’ve been working in the south as a member of the MCSS’s team.
The 15thof
January was such an amazing day for me, I came from Beau Vallon to do the beach
patrol and in Anse Corail, Vanessa told me to dig a nest which was due. During the 5 first
minutes, I found nothing… but after that, I began to see 3 baby turtles, I was
so excited. Vanessa told me that we have to dig up the nest entirely because;
he was very far from the sea and completely in the vegetation with lots of roots and obstacles in the nest itself. In total, we put
224 turtles in the sea. We were very lucky because it was a very big nest.
My first day in
the south (the 21th January) was just amazing because I saw all the
laying process of the Hawksbill turtle. Vanessa and me, stayed with the turtle
for 2h30 hours, she was very slow and very tired, but it was a wonderful moment
for me. It was the first time I saw a turtle laying, so you can imagine how
excited I was!!
On the second week, on Monday and Tuesday, Inga, Laura and I did the
beach profiling. It’s only to measure the erosion on the beach. We have to do
it, each month in all the 6 mains beaches. It was easy, but it was very long
and with the heat it was sometimes hard but we managed to do it very well.
Otherwise, Inga and I were very lucky because on the Sunday 31th
of January evening, just after we ate our dinner, the staff called us, because
there were hatchlings on the beach near the villa. When we arrived, we found 16
baby turtles near the light, which was in the other direction to the sea. They
wanted to cross the road. We know that once on the surface, newborns head to
the sea, the brightest spot. But when there are lights, they are more
attractive by the light rather than to the sea. So, we managed to be very fast,
and didn’t forget any of them (because they were everywhere), so we put all the
baby turtles in my bag to release them afterwards into the sea. It was a
special moment, and we were very excited. The security guy who was with us,
told us, that he already put more than one hundred babies into the sea, because
he found them everywhere near the villa. We were very happy to save the life of
these cute baby turtles.
Monday 8th February, we were on the patrol and in Anse
Corail, Vanessa saw a depression in the sand. When we arrived, we had lots of
hatchlings in the hole, and they could not get out because the hole was too
deep, so we took all of them out of the hole. In total, we had 63 baby turtles
who were still in the hole and in total 137 eggs shells. So lucky to see that!
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