Unexpected guests...

On the 1^st October Reethi Rah was greeted by some unexpected and very cute guests…….

A turtle nest that we did not know about hatched in the early hours of the morning on Turtle beach. Nearly all of the hatchlings made their way into the lagoon to start their lives at sea. However most of their lives would have been very short-lived. Only 2 inches in size they make bite sized meals for all the fish and sharks waiting in the lagoon to gobble them up, a sad fact of life as only 1 in a 1000 hatchlings will make it to adulthood!!

However, although I was very gutted to miss this event and unable to try and save the hatchlings from their ultimate doom the gardener did manage to find 5 of these little guys and bring them to us at recreation. We plan to keep them for a few months and then release them into the wild when they are slightly bigger so hopefully they have a better chance of survival. But it doesn’t stop here…..

Again on the 4^th October yet again another nest that we did not know about hatched on Turtle beach and again 100 or so hatchlings followed the light of the moon into the sea, and again most of them or all of them ended up as breakfast! Whether both these nest were from the same adult female turtle we do not know. Usually they have 10-14 day intervals between laying nests and as this was just a few days it may well have been a different turtle. One little hatchling from this nest however was found in the bushes so he obviously got lost on his way to the sea. Lucky for him though, his bad sense of direction has saved his life, as our 5 little hatchlings now become 6.  Hopefully our protected nest is due to hatch in the next few days and if all goes to plan we can collect all the hatchlings from this nest and release them the next evening on the outside of the atoll. Although the majority of them will probably perish hopefully one or two will make it to adulthood and then return to Reethi Rah in the future to lay more nests. That would be very cool. For now I am on countdown until nest 3 finally decides to pop! Three nests on one beach though, how fantastic is that and hopefully the same green turtles will return next year to lay more nests and maybe next time we will see them coming……..