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| Turtle watchers gather around the first of 44 loggerhead turtle nests to produce babies at Cape Hatteras Light. |
One little soldier stuck her head up through the sand. The
struggle to extricate herself from her sandy den seemed to exhaust her and she
perched, head out, looking around for 10 minutes.
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| Tiny turtle pokes her head through the sand. |
There are another 120 to 150 brothers and sisters in the
pit. This one little turtle seemed to be the scout. She rested long enough and
then made a break for the Atlantic. No muss, no fuss. She headed straight for the
pounding sea. In another 10 minutes, another loggerhead popped up and followed
his or her sister.
Four had launched themselves the previous night without
being seen by any of the rangers and volunteers. All in the dark of night had
made their break for the unfathomable ocean, leaving only the imprint of their
flippers on the damp sand.
This almost anti-climactic event is but the earliest,
faltering steps of a journey that is both astonishing and magical.
The mother loggerhead turtle had clawed her way up the Cape
Hatteras beach on May 28 this year. She scooped a hole in the sand and silently
deposited her clutch of eggs. Then, just as silently, she heaved her 200 pounds
of body weight back down the sand and into the ocean.
She had come home. Between 30 and 33 years ago, she had been
a newborn turtle, just like her newest offspring. She had begun a journey on a
similar night back in the 1980s. Just as now with the newborns, there was no
mother or father to guide and protect her. She was on her own in a predatory
world.
Her first enemy on the beach were hundreds of ghost crabs,
their eyes on stalks. They seem to have a singular goal: Eat the heads of the
newborn loggerheads. To prepare for this event, the crabs build their nests
around the loggerhead nest. They run back and forth to the ocean to fill their
gills with seawater for they need the saltwater to survive. They’re fast and
stealthy.
When mom made it to the sea back then, her task was simple:
get there before the break of dawn, for that is when the birds awaken and begin
their morning patrols, seeking fresh crabs and choice morsels of turtle
meat. She had to get into the ocean and
swim for her life.
In the ocean, however, lurk even more predators. So, with
enemies all around, this little turtle must figure out, on her own, how she
will feed herself to produce the energy necessary to make her way through the
ocean.
If she is extraordinarily lucky, of course, she will come upon
a piece of sargassum weed, a universe of food living within the weed: sea lice,
tiny little crabs, and assorted other bugs. The little turtle can eat all of
it, including the weed itself. Something in its DNA apparently guides it to
make its way south along the Atlantic coast, living off the bounty of the ocean
while making its way toward the Sargasso Sea, that piece of Atlantic above the
equator where a million square miles of ocean feeds the ocean and the creatures
living in the ocean.
The little turtle will linger there for many years,
maturing, learning on her own how to survive and prosper.
When she becomes a teenager, but while only halfway to
sexual maturity, she begins a journey that is easily the equal of the Pacific
Sockeye Salmon. She rides the Gulf Stream north along the Eastern seaboard. She
floats along, coming up to the Gulf of Maine, then heads out past Nova Scotia
and Newfoundland.
She’s in no great rush. But her journey is epic. She crosses
the Atlantic, passing Iceland and then allows the Gulf Stream to take her along
the west coast of Scotland. Down she comes, along the coast of England and
Wales. She crosses the English Channel and makes it to France and then Spain
and Portugal. But her journey is only halfway done by this time. Now she is in
her 20s.
When she arrives on the west coast of Africa, she allows the
equatorial currents to carry her past the Canary Islands and across the
Atlantic. Eventually she come full circle and arrives in the Sargasso Sea. But
she’s far from done. She reaches age 30-33. She is sexually mature at last. Now,
her primary task is to find a male turtle. This is not a long-lasting
relationship. She simply needs to mate.
After the male turtle fertilizes her eggs – and this happens
multiples times with multiple males, incidentally, so she carries the eggs with
a variety of DNA – she knows in her heart that she must now return to her natal
beach. And that’s what brought her on May 28, 2014, to the beach where she was
born. Up she came out of the surf, heavy with eggs. After depositing 120-150
eggs just below the lighthouse, she dragged her cumbersome body back down the
beach and swam on up the beach another couple of miles before repeating her
performance farther up the beach. Her second batch of eggs simply expands the
probability of success for her brood. She might even manage a third trip up on
the beach before, depleted, she swims off to seek food for the first time since
the impregnation began.
And that is what brought us to the beach two nights in a
row. When we arrived tonight, we could see an indentation in the sand, a sure
sign that the babies had eaten their way out of their shells and were preparing
to climb out of the nest and visit their brave new world.
A gaggle of visitors and other rangers gathered with us on
the beach. There was great excitement when the first two turtles made the break
for freedom. They were guided to the ocean by well-intentioned rangers, shining
red flashlights on the sand. The turtles follow the light. The piercing white
light of the Cape Hatteras Light can confuse the turtles. So the rangers try to
give a helping hand.
Jo and I left them to it after there was an hour lull with
no further turtles showing up. We’ll add a note on our Facebook page after we
learn the outcome in the morning
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