24th – Myne Resort -> Turtle Island

Last night close to midnight our guide took a round of our rooms and informed us that the plans had changed. Instead of going to Selingan and the orangutan rehabilitation center we would start off with going to Turtle Island and after that going to the orangutans instead. This also meant that to be able to catch the boat to the island we would be leaving at 0630 with breakfast at 0600.

Despite it being early we all made it from the resort in an orderly fashion and around 0900 we arrived at the jetty. After a short wait we boarded the small open 12-passenger boat (despite having room for as many as the ones we were sailing on the river at Myne resort it was a fair bit larger) and an hour later we arrived at the island. We had some time off before lunch at 1230 and had planned to go down to the beach with the rest of the group to do some snorkeling. Unfortunately when hitting the bed I fell asleep immediately, and didn’t wake up until 15 minutes before lunch. Pretty lucky, actually, considering I never got to set the alarm. We had lunch and afterwards I joined the others on the beach. A couple of snorkel swims later some of us returned to our rooms to have a quick shower before taking a walk around the island, a walk that didn’t last much longer than 20 minutes at a slow pace.

Houses along the coast.

We were introduced to their info center/museum at 1830, saw a short documentary (which, honestly, felt a bit flat after having seen several beautiful BBC documentaries voiced by Attenborough. Not hearing him feels… wrong) and dinner at 1930.

Turtle nursery/hatchery.

Sunset.

From then on it was purely a waiting game before the rangers would pick us up to give us a live tour of what we had come to the island for. At 2100 it finally happened and we were all (all tourists on the island at that time, app. 30. Not due to low popularity but capacity isn’t much higher) rushed along to see a turtle laying her eggs. On the way there we had to be careful where we walked as we clearly passed by a couple of other turtles laying their eggs.

We saw her lay her eggs in darkness except for the rangers’ flashlights and it did feel a bit crowded with all the tourists trying to get a shot, while a ranger collected the eggs as they were laid so they never got buried by the mother. It was soon over and we were rushed along to see them take the eggs to a controlled environment where they were buried. Having seen that we were once again rushed back to the beach to see them releasing a batch of turtles that had just hatched within the last couple of hours. Again immensely crowded. After that had been taken care of it was all over. 35 minutes from laying eggs to releasing new turtles – a process that normally takes 2 months.

Turtle laying eggs.

Turtle being measured after the egg-laying. 

This was a new one on the island so it got tagged and registered accordingly.

A bucket of 60 golf ball-sized eggs.

A new load of hatched turtles ready to be let go.

I don’t know how to feel about it all; it was great to see it live but I feel that they should have split the tourists into two groups instead of the one. They apparently do so when the resort is completely full (around 40 visitors) but I wonder why they didn’t also do it in this case. It was stressful with everyone trying to get a shot of the action pushing forward without catching the ire of the rangers. And I can’t help but think how the egg-laying turtle feels about it; we were only allowed to stand behind it while it was laying its eggs but afterwards they opened up for the chance to take selfies with it up front. That was a bit too much for me. At least they were good at silently yelling at people not understanding the simple order that flashes were banned (and they fully understood the difference between flashes and the cameras’ guide lights which per experience is rare that happens). I had hoped that the sinners got moved away. The flash can be a real issue with the newly hatched as they can potentially be blinded by them.

Coming back to my room I had a shower and noticed that it had gotten obvious that I hadn’t been putting sunscreen on my back. My back had turned to a beautiful – though painless – red color.

Due to the darkness on the island after sunset I went to use my 18-35/f1.8 on the night’s activities. It was easier to get clear shots but there was absolutely no chance to get a close up of anything. Had I known of the clear flash lights used I might have chanced it with my 50-500/f4.5-6.3 instead which I have been using on all the other night activities to get some potentially amazing close-ups of the little ones going into the sea. Oh, well.