There are many high as and lows in doing this type of work. Being in one of the most beautiful places in the world is an obvious high, as well as participating in a small part of one of the great cycles of nature when the turtles come back to nest. But sometimes we must accept that part of the cycle includes death.
So it was that this morning I found a dead female loggerhead turtle on the beach. She reached her last resting place on a small quiet beach beyond Kokkinos Pyrgos and would have been washed up there late yesterday or during the night, as the waves were quite high. There was no obvious cause of death but it is always distressing to see. I placed my tape measure over the longest part of her shell and recorded a maximum curved carapace length of 64.7 cm, indicating that she was still a juvenile, albeit quite a large one. Not yet ready to nest for some years but she had still survived many years at sea until this summer. We hope that we have many nests this year to keep the great cycle of turtle life moving forward.
So it was that this morning I found a dead female loggerhead turtle on the beach. She reached her last resting place on a small quiet beach beyond Kokkinos Pyrgos and would have been washed up there late yesterday or during the night, as the waves were quite high. There was no obvious cause of death but it is always distressing to see. I placed my tape measure over the longest part of her shell and recorded a maximum curved carapace length of 64.7 cm, indicating that she was still a juvenile, albeit quite a large one. Not yet ready to nest for some years but she had still survived many years at sea until this summer. We hope that we have many nests this year to keep the great cycle of turtle life moving forward.
No comments:
Post a Comment