Turtle Time

"Turtle Time!" A man yells running up from the beach. 
Everyone stops what they are doing. Card hands are left on the table mid-game. I pause the podcast that my mom and I are listening to together. The guides put out their cigarettes and lead the group with flashlights towards the beach. This is the moment everyone on the island has been waiting all day for. 

Ten Hours Earlier . . .
My mom and I were sitting on a small jetty in Sandakan, Borneo with a bunch of other strangers. We all seemed to be eyeing the docked boats warily wondering if we would be getting on one of them. Our guide, Darwis, picked us up from the hotel earlier in the morning. We were running late, but Darwis ensured us that the boat wouldn't leave without us. He told us to sit while we waited for his signal. Mom went to the bathroom and came back quickly, saying she could wait. He finally gave the signal, a small wave, and we carried our baggage to the small motorboat. It was about an hour ride to the even smaller island off of Borneo called Selingaan Island, or as it was nicknamed Turtle Island. 

We had arrived in Borneo three days earlier. I had decided to go on one last trip in Asia, before going home for a few weeks. My mom met and came with me. This is a poor life choice, I had thought to myself as I was taking the bus from Taichung to Taipei for the last time. It had been an emotionally draining week. I had said goodbye to my students, my friends, and the country that had been my home for the past year. I am not a crier, but I started crying almost immediately when I woke up. It continued on and off for most of the day. Though by evening on the first night in Borneo, I was glad that I had chosen to go to Borneo before going home. It was a place that I had looked into visiting even before I had left for Taiwan. It provided a good distraction, and animal distractions are the best. 

When we arrived on the island, we were met with beautiful sandy beaches. Before we were shown to our rooms, Darwis pointed out a board hanging over the dining hall. It showed various statistics on the turtles on the island, including number of nests made and the number of eggs laid during the year. It also showed the time that turtles had come to the beach to start laying their eggs. The previous night it was recorded at 10:50 pm, so we could possibly be in for a long night. We had a couple hours of downtime before lunch, so Mom and I went to our room for a bit. 
       "Do you know what this reminds me of?" I asked as we walked to our room. 
       "What?" Mom responded.
       "A bunch of strangers meet on a secluded island. Only one boat on and one boat off. I've read this book and seen this mini-series." 
My mom didn't believe me that someone was probably going to get murdered within the next twenty-four hours. I told her to just wait until someone didn't show up at mealtimes. Everyone showed up to lunch in the dining hall that I noticed.  

The sunset on Turtle Island. 

In the afternoon, most people on the island went to the beach. You could rent snorkelling equipment, but we opted for just straight swimming. It was a good choice, because the allocated beach area was very shallow. It was hard to swim without knocking into or stepping on some coral. After swimming we walked around the island. It took us less than an hour to circumnavigate the whole island. Darwis took us to the beach to watch the sunset and explain to us what would be happening this evening. As he was talking to us, we saw some turtles start climbing onto the beach. We had to leave the beach, so the turtles could start building their nests. There would be nobody allowed on the beach from 6 pm to 6 am, except for the rangers who helped collect the eggs.  Before dinner we watched a brief video on the history of the island's turtle conservation. The hatchery was started in 1966 to protect the endangered green sea turtles and hawksbill turtles. Both species are endangered, largely due to people selling and eating their eggs. Everyone showed up to dinner. After dinner, we just waited until a ranger spotted a turtle who had laid at least five eggs. It didn't take long.

"Turtle Time!" A man yells running up from the beach. 
Everyone stops what they are doing. Card hands are left on the table mid-game. I pause the podcast that my mom and I are listening to together. The guides put out their cigarettes and lead the group with flashlights towards the beach. This is the moment everyone on the island has been waiting all day for. We run to the beach following the flashlights. There are a couple turtles that we notice, but we are told to keep moving until we get to the one with the ranger. The turtle had a small pile of eggs already in the nest. They can lay between 80-165 eggs in one night. The mother turtle is working hard to push all of the eggs out. The excess salt from the green sea turtle's salt gland make it look like she is crying. When she is finished, the ranger collects her eggs in a bucket. The mother works on burying the nest, not knowing that her eggs are no longer there. The ranger then checks her shell for any harmful coral that needs to be scraped off.The ranger also checks the tracker that is on the turtle. It has been seven years since she has last been to the island. She moves about a foot in front of the nest before taking a rest. We are led off the beach to the next part of the program. 

The mother turtle is working hard to lay the eggs. 

A ranger helps collect the eggs and helps the mom make her way back to the ocean. 

Earlier in the day, we passed a gated area with green material in holes. We were told it was where the eggs stayed in the hatchery. It was unclear how this worked though. For the second program, we get to see it first hand. The ranger takes the eggs that have been collected from the mom and puts them in one of the holes. Then they get buried in the sand. The green material around the hole protects it from any predators. The eggs need to incubate for two months, before they will finally hatch. A stake marks the number of eggs and the date and serves as their "birth certificate." "Congratulations, you are all godparents now," one of the rangers says. 

One of the two hatcheries for the eggs. Each hole marks one nest. 

The final program is releasing the baby turtles into the ocean. The ranger has a basket of turtles that hatched during the day. We surround the babies in a semi-circle. They put a light on the ocean to help guide them, but some turtles need a thumb to help rotate them to the right direction. It takes several tries for some of them to make it to the ocean. Only about 4% of the turtles will survive into adulthood. The put the light on the water and we can see all of them swimming around. 

One of the baby turtles making its way to the ocean. 

Before we go to bed for the night, Darwis gathers up our group. He tells us that we are not allowed on the beach until 6 am, but there was a chance that we could still see some turtles laying eggs after that. He says that we could take a morning walk, just for the chance of seeing more turtles. The next morning we wake up and start walking around the beach. We make it about halfway around without seeing any turtles. We questioned whether or not to just go back to our room. Then we see a ranger waving towards us. We both start running as we saw a turtle making its way to the ocean across the beach. We get there just as it goes back into the ocean. It is followed by another turtle. Closer towards the middle of the island, I see some sand being thrown. I go over to investigate and spot a turtle burying its nest. There are two other turtles that we find still on the beach. We watch them until it is time for breakfast. The board shows that twenty-nine nests were made during the night. The rangers collected 1945 eggs and released 452 hatchlings. It was a memorable twenty-four hours and a highlight of our Borneo trip. Each day it got a little bit easier to be away from Taiwan.

One of the turtles making its way back to the ocean.