Forecast: 29°, still gale force winds. Strong currents. Still no boat trips. Poor snorkelling visibility. Pool still refilling (it's seriously deep at one end for scuba training.) We sit under the pandanus trees, watch the sea plane land and secretly hope this is how we’ll have to leave, since the ferry is also delayed and uncertain. We read, we snooze, we make a start on the Christmas cake I have smuggled ashore.
I take a guided bird spotting walk, again with the very knowledgeable Rachel and see a large array - permanent residents, visitors passing through and those who have come from far north (Alaska, Siberia) to nest in warmer climates. Some have been tracked and are known to make that trip not by island hopping, but in one long flight.
Hilary and I again head out after dinner looking for turtles coming ashore. We now have our favourite spot beside a large bundle of driftwood and tonight meet Ian, another devoted volunteer. He also has an interesting story behind him, having worked for Rio Tinto for many years, often on environmental issues.
He has worked in turtle conservation elsewhere but this is his first summer at Heron.
As the number of people along the beach dwindle, Ian has five nesting ladies in his quadrant of the island to supervise. The near-full moon moves in and out behind passing clouds, making work reasonably easy. Tracks across the beach are certainly easy to spot. Green turtles and loggerheads leave different tracks according to their walking style.
Ian applies his turtle obstetrician skills and rules out those that are a way off yet. He and I watch the first one who is onto her third hole, the first two having collapsed in the overly dry sand. She is a slow, lumbering prehistoric form in the darkness as she moves across the dune. Once she starts laying her ping-pong sized eggs (about 100 per clutch) Ian scrambles in to measure her length (another 106cm lady) and read her ID tags in the ‘arm pits’ of her front flippers.
Adult females will lay 5-6 clutches of 100 eggs over the summer season and only return to do so once every 3-4 years. The chance of one of all those eggs surviving to breeding age is 1-1000 eggs... less than one female survivor from four years of work. The rest become seafood for something higher up the food chain, hence the volunteers’ passion for their work. The loggerheads are so endangered that Bill and Janine further along are digging up a new loggerhead nest to relocate the eggs to a caged area further along the beach for seriously close supervision.
I forgo watching any more as the heavens open. I need to get home to bed before Santa comes, although tonight was a pretty good present in itself...
2025-02-10