Despite a long day at work in Orlando, I dashed home to scarf down some leftover lasagna and beeline to the Merritt Island Refuge
I had booked a spontaneous excursion the day prior out to Playalinda Beach to take part in a turtle watch… and it just happens to be National Sea Turtle Day🐢🪹
After a briefing at the visitor center, we all got in our own cars in a single file line to head out in search of some action. Volunteers were already out combing the sand dunes and we got the call almost immediately upon arrival.
Our caravan of 19 crossed the boardwalk quietly via only a red light and found our mama already plopping out a bunch of eggs. We were told she enters a semi-trance, so we didn’t disturb her birthing process. Golf ball sized pods oozed out in ones and threes, quickly filling the hole she had dug. And then she efficiently flapped her back fins to cover all her eggs with a thick layer of sand prior to inching her way back to the safe confines of the sea. Nature is so surreal & mesmerizing!
We waited off to the side while she made her solo trek and the volunteers labeled & staked a pole in the ground to give her eggs a fighting chance of survival.
Current nests:
642 loggerhead
16 green
7 leatherback
1 in 10,000 survive to adulthood
Come back to same beach to lay eggs
Life span can be up to 116 yrs
FearlessAdventures 