By Lucy Munday
I am sitting in the moonlight listening to the swish and swoop of a giant mother digging her nest. She is breathing heavily as her fins create space for her brood of golf ball-sized eggs to incubate for the next few months. Soon enough the whole team from Juara Turtle Project have found us and are walking towards me and mum from the shoreline, using her tracks as a guide.
On Tioman Island, down the east coast of Malaysia, just a few hours from Singapore, lies a dwindling nesting ground for green, hawksbill and leatherback turtles. It used to be that Tioman was host to thousands of nesting mothers, but tourism, over fishing and pollution have for a long time created destruction around this species. Now just four nesting grounds remain from more than twenty.
A nesting mother might lay up to 150 eggs in one sitting. But consider — if an egg isn’t poached or eaten, if it hatches in to a baby turtle, it still has a one in 10,000 chance of reaching sexual maturity 30 years later. The numbers then begin to look very small and the reality of endangerment becomes incredibly obvious.
Over ten years ago however, a team of caring conservationists decided something had to be done. Since then, the turtle project at Juara have re-nested literally thousands of eggs in their hatchery and released the babies safely into the sea with the help of the hostel guests who volunteer for the projects. Anyone wishing to stay is expected to muck in and help maintain the venue and conduct ‘turtle talks’ to visitors, as well as even getting involved in monitoring coral bleaching and algae growth.
While I was there I helped to feed their resident blind 8-year-old turtle Jo among other duties. When Jo hatched and was released with the others, Charlie the current manager, noticed that Jo was spinning in circles and on closer inspection, born without any eyes. She/he (because she’s only eight and no one can tell yet) has been living in the safety of the project ever since. I should point out that this is not their standard practice but since Jo would never have survived in the wild the team decided to take care of her.
Jo is the living example of what Juara aims for: to ensure the thriving and lasting legacy of turtle populations on Tioman island. Many people might ask what is so important about saving one particular species like the turtle. Isn’t extinction part of life? Indeed it is, but not at the current rate that human impact is having on the globe. Turtles matter as much as losing bees, whales and any other animal because bio diversity is key to a healthy natural world, which, dare I say, is also key to our success as a species. We also have a moral obligation to clean up the en-masse mess we create across the world.
Going to Juara was an eye-opening and humbling experience. Watching a mother lay her eggs and then re-nest them, knowing that I was doing a small bit to helping the continuation of such charismatic creatures, gave me so much more than I could have asked for and much more than any spa break.
Featured photo, Tioman Island via Shutterstock
