FISHER PLAYS ‘NANNY’ TO BABY SEA TURTLES IN CALAPAN CITY
CITY OF CALAPAN—Some 74 newly hatched olive ridley turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) were released back to the waters off Barangay Navotas in this city on Friday, some two months after they emerged from the sands and were cared for by a local fisherman and his friends.
Robert Alfante, 40, a fisher from Barangay Gutad, was walking along the shore of his village at dawn on Dec. 4 when he spotted a mother turtle laying eggs at a portion of the beach that is often washed out by the sea’s strong waves.
“Worried about their safety, he relocated them (turtle eggs) to a higher place,” Clark Ross Bautista, marine protected area and coastal resource management coordinator under the Fishery and Management Office (FMO) in Calapan City, said in a phone interview Friday.
Bautista said Alfante immediately reported the finding to them and, without being told, built a fence around the relocation area of the eggs with the help of his cousin Maria Carla Castillo, daughter of a member of the Barangay Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Management Council in Barangay Gutad.
Alfante was at first reluctant to release the hatchlings, fearing it would be unsafe to do so because of the strong sea waves. But on Friday, he agreed to let go 74 of the baby turtles that were part of the batch of 92 eggs.
There were still two unhatched eggs while two others were being hatched very slowly out of the egg, said Bautista. Eleven of the eggs were found rotten and three others died because they were unable to get out of the sand.
Fisherman’s instinct
Alfante had not even undergone any of their conservation trainings but was able to secure and raise the baby turtles to be ready for their release, Bautista said.
“If not for a fisherman’s instinct to keep safe the eggs when he first saw them in December, the hatchling success rate of 90 percent would not be possible,” he added.
The olive ridley sea turtle, also called the Pacific ridley sea turtle, is found in warm and tropical waters, primarily in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but also in the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
The species is classified as vulnerable, or likely to become endangered unless their circumstances threatening its survival and reproduction improve, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.
The months from August to February are the turtles’ nesting season, said Marius Panahon, technical and planning officer designate of FMO.
Bautista said they would conduct more trainings to residents so they would be better prepared in the next similar encounter with the turtles.
“As to fisherman Alfante, he will make a very good ‘steward’ in conservation undertakings,” said Bautista.
He added that he would recommend to the city’s environment and natural resources office head Wilfredo Landicho that the fisherman be given an incentive for his efforts.