1967: Turtles

With a few days of vacation remaining, I decided to travel to the East Coast with an Indian and a Chinese friend to see one of the great natural wonders of Malaysia: the giant sea turtles. Sea turtles can be found in almost all of the world's waters, but in very few places do they lay their eggs: some parts of the Caribbean, some islands in the South Pacific, a few rocks off the northwest coast of Borneo, and a stretch of beach, just north of Dungun, on the Malay peninsula’s east coast. Nobody knows why the turtles have chosen these few places as repositories for their eggs, and no one knows how they manage to find the same beaches, year after year, after swimming literally thousands of miles on the open sea. While we were at Dungun we saw a turtle which had been tagged off Borneo, over 1000 miles distance; at least one turtle tagged that Aungun has shown up on the Florida coast, halfway around the world. The Navy, among others, would love to know how the turtles navigate, and they suspect the turtles use the polarized light of the sky as an aid; but nothing is very certain. I hope nobody finds out how they do it for a long time: this big riddle makes the animals much more fascinating.

Since they come onto, the beach is only late at night, Julia, Nikki and I laid down on the sand to rest for a while, and soon fell fast asleep. About two in the morning, I was awakened by the sound of something moving in the sand nearby. Sure enough, there she was, the big dear, lumbering up from the sea not 10 yards from us. Only then did we realize how huge the sea turtles really are: ours had a shell almost 6 feet long, and measured over 8 feet from flipper to flipper (this is slightly larger than average). We were careful not to disturb her, because we knew that the turtles are finicky about when and where they lay their eggs, and can be scared off by too much noise or movement. Ours plowed around aimlessly for about 15 minutes until deciding she would have a go at it.

Now, once a turtle begins to dig a hole, nothing on earth can sway her from her task, so when we saw her back flippers begin to dig, we moved up close to better watch the process. The entire operation lasted about 1 1/2 hours, and we spent much of the time lying right beside her, gazing into her big turtle eyes (it was love at first sight): she never once gave the slightest hint that she even saw us. It was rather unnerving to discover that she just couldn’t care less about us human beings.

After the hole was dug about 2 feet deep, the turtle grunts began (very much like human belches), and the egg started dropping, three at a time, until over 100 smooth, white, rubbery spheres the size of snooker balls had been deposited. It must’ve been hard work, for she was crying like a baby when she finished. As each egg dropped, the Malay fisherman who owns the beach picked it up and put it in a bag, for later sale at the market (five cents each). So much for those turtles. (But in case you are worried – and I was - there is a turtle hatchery down the beach, so a certain percentage of the eggs are guaranteed a proper future). Incidentally, sea turtle eggs taste lousy.

We tried to talk the giant mother out of covering the empty hole, explaining to her, in as clear away as we could, she had been robbed, and that any further effort should be directed towards biting the Malay fisherman on the leg, but she continue to ignore us. Filling in the hole and camouflaging it whereabouts took her a long time, but you did a good job: the beach for a radius of 10 yards looked uniformly devastated. Then she lumbered back to the water, and with one-stroke of her flippers, she was gone. Over the next few days, she would return two or three more times for a repeat performance, and then swim away to parts unknown.