Turtles!

We spent our next day in Borneo out on Turtle Island, one of only a few islands that sea turtles go to lay their eggs. The island to which we traveled was part of a hatchery program where the turtles lay the eggs, rangers collect the eggs to put them in a hatchery to protect them from predators, and then release the baby turtles.

The island was off the coast of Borneo, about an hour's boat ride. Really a picturesque cartoon of a desert island, with palm trees rising from the center smack dab in the middle of nowhere. We walked the circumference of the island in under 30 minutes. Incidentally, a shout out about global warming - the island has started to erode due to rising water heights and is estimated to disappear completely in the next 5-10 years. Good bye sea turtle nesting area. :(

Anyway, we were lucky, and despite it being monsoon season and low season for turtle nesting, 3 mama turtles came ashore to lay eggs the night we were there. We watched one turtle lay eggs, about 100 in total, and then cover them up.

*Interesting fun fact: the sex of turtles is determined by the temperature of the sand where they incubate. Colder sand produces male turtles and warmer sand produces female turtles.

Later, the ranger brought baby turtles to the beach for release into the water. There were about 100-200 in a bucket. Very cute and full of energy. Who knew baby turtles could move so fast? Obviously they use up all their speediness at a young age. Upon release, the baby turtles, about 1.5 inches long each, sprinted to the water and started swimming out to sea. At least the smart ones did. Despite being released about 5 feet from the water, the homing instinct from some of the turtles was not fully developed, as 10 minutes later, a few were still going around in circles. Susan was convinced that these were the male turtles.

Ha. Ha. Ha.