Waiting to Be Known

My last full day in Parismina, I was starting to worry about not seeing any turtles. We had protected a nest, and examined a recently hatched nest, but there were oddly few turtles to be seen. So, Kara, Dugan, the Bellinghamanians, and I took a couple boats out to the ocean to see green turtles mating. It felt a bit lascivious for a field trip.

The best part about the boat trip itself was that we started on Rio Pacuare, and had to head out through the breaking waves where the river met the ocean. The first wave we took sideways, and apparently we weren’t frightened enough by it, because the second wave we took head on. The driver had told Kara and me to hold onto steel rails on the gunwales, and so we each had a hand on one of those. Looking at the waves, Kara thought maybe we should link arms. So, when we crested over the wave, Kara and I each had one hand on the boat, and were linked to each other, and otherwise were not touching the boat at all. We were several feet off the seat of the boat until it came down thump at the bottom of the wave and our butts caught up with the seat all at once.

We wanted to do it all again, but someone said something about some sea turtles or something . . .

We did end up seeing a bunch of mating pairs, usually just the smaller male with a shadow of the female* below them. A few times the female said, screw your voyeuristic tendencies, and disappeared, but once the male noticed the audience and totally abandoned the female to her fate, which seemed a little rude under the circumstances. A couple of the female turtles flipped us off before they swam under the water, which seemed extra entertaining to me.

That night, I thought maybe I should just bail on the walk. After all, even though I had the early shift, I was still only going to have a couple hours of sleep before starting my trip back to Heredia. But I went, at least partially because Kara had seen a nest about to head out to the sea the night before, and I wanted to be in her group.

Dinoflagellates lit our steps, arcing out flashes of light as we stepped on and near them. I tried to make patterns, but they were to clever at avoiding that kind of silly behaviour.

When we got to the clutch that night, the tracks of the baby turtles ran right underneath the butts of the high school group that had taken over part of our sector. Joshua pulled out six sleepy baby leatherbacks. He said these were the weak ones who were meant to act as decoys for the strong ones when the crabs and fish start to eat the mess of swimming babies.

One woke up right away and was sent on his way. We woke the others my stroking them, avoiding the open belly button through which we could accidentally transmit infection to them. When three woke up and started heading to the light, we dug a pit and put the two sleepy ones in the bottom, letting the awake ones wake them up by stepping on them and otherwise starting shit. They skittered and scampered over each other, all turtle wobbly and fit-in-your-hand adorable

When they were all awake, we gave the highschoolers 2 and took three, getting them away from the fish we assumed had gathered for the all-you-can-eat baby leatherback buffet earlier.

Mine kept trying to head for the light, but his fins moved pretty ineffectively against the palm of my hand, and he stayed there, even as his little flippers kept going and going—scritchy scratchy against my palms.

Finally we found a good spot and started the turtles on their way. One got all turned around and was going the wrong way. I’m pretty sure that one was mine. To be fair, Kara’s white cap may have been a distraction, though.

Hirvin made sure they all got to the water and we stood stock still, afraid of stepping on a rogue baby.

We walked back to our starting point, high on the babies, verbing like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Kara and I occasionally grabbing each other to say, how cool was that!

And then we found the sector one group. A leatherback (baula in Spanish), 1.75m long just measuring her shell, was laying eggs.

Leatherbacks are really interesting. They’re the biggest sea turtles, and because the adults subsist on jellyfish, their meat is toxic to eat. Because of that, they don’t have a lot of predators when they’re grown. Also, because they don’t have a proper shell, but rather a flexible one, they can dive down further than all the other turtles and a bunch of other sea life.

I don’t know how to describe the leatherback. She was ancient, prehistoric, primordial. She was a glance at the distant past—a past so distant it barely echoes in the salt of our veins. She was a meditation on focus. She was . . . .

Her shell was smooth, but durable, like fingernails. Her flippers didn’t feel fleshy, but like the tools they are. Her stripes made it seem as though she should race back to the ocean. Her eyes secreted mucosy tears to protect themselves from the air and the sand, and it was hard not to anthropomorphize a meaning to it all.

Joshua ran to get the others, as turtle sightings were rare that week. When he came back, he reminded us that, in order to be respectful, we should probably back up.

The baula finished covering up eggs that were no longer there—removed by the other volunteers and moved to a different spot, as a turtle nest is anything but subtle.

She eventually finished to her satisfaction, starting to turn. The baula lumbered down what was left of the embankment, pausing every three steps or so. She was clumsy and ungainly. I wished I could see her swim. Her tracks looked like they belonged to a tractor.

She padded into the surf; the moon had finally come out to help us see. She was silhouetted by the ocean, the moon, and occasional flashes of lightning in the distance. She bobbed on a wave, and then she disappeared into the ocean.

Kara and I made up a happy turtle dance. It’s adorable. Even Dugan got in on some turtle dance action, when he was done pretending he was too cool.

*I like that in Spanish there are specific words for male and female animals: macho and embra. I especially like the way embra sounds.