Riding wave of humanity for turtles
ATTENTION: heroes in a half shell.
Kuta Beach has been in the news for all the wrong reasons recently. An Australian tourist is being held on the Indonesian island after a police officer was found bludgeoned to death on the sand.
Anyone who has visited the popular holiday spot will know the beach is a hive of impromptu bars and roving souvenir stalls, which have only exploded in the past 20 years.
And the presence of tourists in all manner of states is as reliable as the sunset.
But the beach has another loyal resident. Olive ridley sea turtles have been coming to the island long before the first Aussie came looking for a Bintang. Between March and September, the vulnerable turtles, which live in the Pacific and Indian oceans, haul themselves up the sand in the night and navigate the plastic chairs, surfboards and passed-out people to lay and bury their eggs.
They come back to the same spot every year, come hell or high water. Luckily, they have a guardian angel — the Bali Sea Turtle Society. The group’s volunteers carefully move the newly laid eggs to a special hatchery further up the beach, away from hungry animals, scooter wheels and litter. And when the youngsters dig their way out of the nest they are collected to be safely released by an army of conservationists. So I found myself holding a takeaway container and standing shoulder to shoulder with other visitors keen to help give the locals a fighting chance. Inside the container was a feisty little turtle determined to scramble out into the wide ocean ahead.
On the count of three we crouched down and tipped out our young charges.
In a flap of flippers, a mass of turtles raced to the water’s edge, some instantly thriving, some slow and steady.
The stragglers detoured and struggled while some of the frontrunners dramatically tumbled back up the beach among the waves, forced to start again. But eventually they were gone and only the occasional breaking of the silvery surface gave away that they were even there.
Of every thousand babies released, only one is expected to make it to adulthood.
I hope our clutch defy the odds and when they return I hope they are met by even more people willing to defy the odds, if only for an afternoon.