Hi, my name is Salomé. I come from France. I'm
28 years old.
I'm a student in last year of biology bachelor.
I'm doing an internship with MCSS for about 5 months.
I’m working on marine turtle project. It's my first experience with the turtles and
in Seychelles as well.
I always wanted work for the protection of
wildlife, I took my time, and now I will do what I always wanted.
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| Restraining turtle for data collection |
I will start with my first encounter with a hawksbill
turtle. It was my first day, lucky girl! I was completely lost. You have to
know that my English is very bad. So, I didn't understand anything that I
heard. Suddenly, I just understood "turtle here”. Vanessa had received a
call from the field assistants on the beach. We have a turtle there! Quickly,
we took our materials and went to the beach. ….my internship had officially started!
It was an amazing day; she was so beautiful,
incredible to see this turtle. We went
on patrols three days per week on the six main beaches in the south of Mahé. It
was a good way to discover new beaches and some places where there is no one
except you, the sea and the turtle! We saw lots of tracks, few turtles and we
identified the new nests.
During the peaks of
the season, I encountered six hawksbill turtles; I saw three of them laying the
eggs.
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| Hawksbill turtle laying |
When the turtle starts
to lay you can make the measures and check if she's injured or if she's ok, as
she is in a trance and once she has started laying the eggs she will not stop,
so it is the perfect time to approach her for data collection. She lay between
100 and 200 eggs, sometimes one by one, sometimes three by three. When finished
she covers the nest with the sand carefully. Her flippers are like a hand. Then
camouflage her nest splashing sand everywhere….have to be careful during this
step ….back off or you will easily be sand splashed :)
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| Up or down...? |
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| The Rock climber! |
As you know, they are critically
endangered species, that's why we have to be careful with ecological impact.
They need us.
When the laying season
goes off peak, we are then busy checking the hatching of the nests. If you are
lucky, you can see little hatchlings…
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| Rescuing disorientated hatclings |
