Turtles Unite

I call this turtles into the wild. I call this one of the coolest events of my life. I call this story the fulfillment of one of my life time goals!
My wife’s parents live near Holden Beach, North Carolina, and we make the trip about every other summer. My folks live in Lewistown, Montana, and so we alternate each summer. When we visit her folks we usually rent a beach house with some of her sisters and brothers. She has 6, and so usually someone is down at the beach. Holden Beach was a steam room this August 5, and I am not one for heat or humidity, and I had decided to hang out in the air conditioned beach house the entire week, but when I heard that there were 20 or so loggerhead nests along the strip of beach - pregnant with possibilities - I decided to take a swim in my own sweat in order to realize one of my lifetime goals.
Baby Loggerhead turtles are unpredictable when hatching, but usually they hatch in the evenings and follow the moon’s rays into the vast and deadly Atlantic ocean. So, with camera in hand, I walked The Green Mile (Actually it was about 100 yards) to the steamy, hazy, sand-infested beach to witness a miracle of nature. In the evening haze we could just make out the white foamy waves rolling in, and red bouncing lights near the small oat covered dunes. What are those lights? Could they be giant red fireflies? No, they were the intrepid and excruciatingly patient turtle watchers with special red coverings over their flashlights so as not to disorient the little loggerheads march to the sea.
There just happened to be a nest right in front of our beach house, but unfortunately there was no hatching going on. We asked the professional watchers what are chances were of seeing any, but they said to try the next nest about a 150 yards further down the beach. Reluctantly I exposed my bared feet and ankles to the forever sticky and infuriatingly uncomfortable sand particles for the entire 150 yards. It was pure torture. At the next nest, and each nest is carefully covered with a grate to keep out dogs, coons and sea gulls, the red lights were bouncing excitedly, but still no loggerheads. Once a nest is located the professionals were telling us, they put the grate on, put up a sign and cordon off the nest with red warning tape not unlike the yellow tape at a crime scene. After a certain amount of days, the approximate time for the hatching, they dig a trench about half way to the sea in order to give these walking fast-food snacks for every predator a ghost-of-a-chance for survival.
When we arrived we found the grate removed, the nest collapsed a bit (indicating that hatching was occurring), the trench cleared, and a large lamp placed at the end of the trench. The lamp, I was told, was to orient and speed the little reptiles down the trench toward the sea. Loggerheads need to flap, wobble, and scoot a certain amount of beach feet in order to imprint Holden Beach into their animal data bases so that years and years from now they will be able to come back to this very beach and lay more eggs (about 100-120 in each nest). It is really quite
phenomenal, even spiritual to me. After waiting an eternity (actually 20 minutes) I asked the Turtle Watchers what the devil was taking so long. They informed me that the process of breaking out of their shells is exhausting work for the little guys and often after breaking out they fall asleep - of all the nerve! Here, I’ve been waiting twenty minutes, and these extremely rare and endangered infant turtles can’t accommodate my schedule.
Another twenty minutes go by and impatience wins out. I leave the trench, the nest, the bobbing red lights and trudge through the hellish 150 yard sand trap they call a beach paradise back to our beach access, or as I would say, my air conditioned, no sand zone access. Salvation is just in sight when the professional Turtle Watchers at the nest in front of our beach house exclaim, “The nest has collapsed!”
My party decides to wait and see. I weakly protest, but curiosity wins out. Ten minutes later they break the surface. Struggling under a foot or more of packed sand they dig and dig and dig flapping their legs like Popeye rowing madly after his Olive Oil so as to lift off from the sea they propel themselves into the steamy humid sea air. I choke. A flipper, then a head breaks the surface. The grate comes off, and surgically gloved hands gently lift the loggerhead into a plastic bin. The only noise are its fins bopping the side of the bin trying desperately to reach the bright light at the end of the trench.
No more humidity, no more sticky heat, no more gritty sand between my toes and other unmentionable places, no more complaining! Pure bliss! Surrealism. Tears. Bundles of darkest green sand dollar sized dynamos, unstoppable in their purpose with flailing flappers fill the bin. One, two, three…fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…let them go. The gun goes off, and the race for survival begins. My hands are shaking as I try to steady myself for the procession of loggerhead babes headed haphazardly down the trench toward the light, their moon. I can barely hold my camera still, and there in my foggy lens I spot the first turtle flying helter skelter into the lantern’s light. I push the shutter to catch this race for life when another gloved hand shoots into my viewfinder and carries away my forest green subject and quickly places it into another plastic bin, and she shouts, “One!”
The march, well sort of a march, continues until one hundred and eleven baby loggerheads, of which, about twenty at a time are lifted into another bin and walked the last 40 feet into the surf where they are dropped out into the sea never to be seen again. Their fate is somewhat hard to talk about. Of the 111 loggerheads I saw so painstakingly watched over by the professionals, not one will survive to adulthood.
I stumble back into the air conditioned beach house. I can breath again, but barely. It is hard to fathom this miracle I’ve seen. I’m still trying to comprehend it.