March to the Sea - Hawksbill Sea Turtles

I was able to mark something off my bucket list tonight - watching little sea turtles march to the sea!   It was such an awesome sight.  Gary called me this afternoon and asked would I like to see them release the turtles to the sea - and of course I said yes!  They were going to release them at 6:30 pm on the west coast - after the sunset.  They like to release them at night to lessen the chance of the turtles being eaten by crabs and birds.  Only 1 in 1000 hatchings make it to adulthood!  

The reason we were able to see this was because these little turtles hatched from their nest today and thinking that the lights at a nearby hotel were the sun/moon - they headed towards the lights.  The hotel staff diligently picked up around 100 turtles during the day and put them in this box for release later on at night.  

The hawksbill sea turtle gets its name because it's head is shaped like the bill of a bird.  It takes 25 years for these little turtles to reach adulthood.  They mostly feed on sponges around the reefs off of tropical islands where they can go ashore and lay their eggs.  The nest usually takes around 60 days to hatch.  The nest is under the ground, covered in sand.  When the turtles hatch, they use their flippers to move the sand out of the way, the sand starts shifting downward and they gradually move themselves to the top.  This is a picture of our guide for this event - his name is Tom.  He flew into Barbados about 2 weeks ago for this very purpose.  He said that most of the hatchings occur between May and September.  

What an awesome experience.  It was so neat seeing these little creatures head for the sea.  Because they follow a light - Tom used his torch (better known as a flashlight to us Americans) - and he stood right at the edge of the water - so that the turtles would follow his light into the sea. He asked us to be very still and not move our feet and if we did need to move, to shuffle our feet to move in the sand.