Wayfarer


SCAN THIS PAGE TO SEE BONUS CONTENT ON THE TURTLES. SEE PAGE 7 FOR INSTRUCTIONS.


Turtle prints in the setting sun


By Tania Moffat


the beach with flashlights looking for signs of freshly dug nests. While sea turtles are very agile in the water, it is an arduous task for them to walk up the beach, dig a nest to lay their eggs and return to the ocean. It is an effort that many older turtles don’t survive. Still year after year the same turtles return to this beach to lay their eggs, and their offspring, those that survive, will also return to this same place to lay their eggs. It is somewhat of a mys-


A 64 • Summer 2017


long the vast open beach in a town called Troncones lies a small but important sanc- tuary dedicated to saving sea turtles. Every night after sunset eight staff members scour


tery how the turtles know how to come back to the same beach, but they do. (No research, tracking or tagging are done in this part of Mexico.) Females will dig nests over one foot deep where they


lay their eggs before covering them with sand, and re- turning to the sea. Although 80 to 120 eggs are laid in each nest, left to their own devices only two to three per cent of their offspring will survive. Predators dig up the nests killing many before they even have a chance to hatch. With the help of turtle farms such as this, the odds of survival increase to 15 to 20 per cent, still a dis- mal number.


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