By Fedde Burgers | Chairman of the board
Nesting season for sea turtles started on May 15th. We trained a lot of new volunteers to be ready for beach monitoring. Some highlights of what kept our organization busy the last couple of months:
First nest
In the morning of May 16th we got a call from Blue Bay beach security and dive school Dive Division about a big sea turtle in distress behind a fence. On the scene our team found a female hawksbill that got lost during nesting activity. Together with the dive school they took the turtle back to the beach. Here they measured and tagged the turtle so we can identify her when she gets seen again. After this she was released back into the sea.
As no nest was found by the team we thought she didn't lay eggs. 6 weeks later however we got an alarming call from Blue Bay... hatchlings were crawling on the beach. We went there immediately and we managed to collect 38 hawkbill hatchlings which we released after all lights were off. The morning after we went back to Blue Bay to try to locate the nest and excavate it. We found 56 alive hatchlings inside. Without our help these hatchlings wouldn't have a change to survive but luckily we were there in time to safe them. We released those hatchlings that night with a large group of tourists and locals that witnessed this unique event.
New signage on beaches
In a project to raise awareness (sponsored by Seacology) on how to behave around sea turtle nesting beaches and resident sea turtle beaches, we created and placed a lot of new signs and posters. This project is really necessary, because we experience that not all tourists and locals on Curacao know that you shouldn't touch or chase turtles.
Turtle rock 2nd edition
After the success of previous edition of our fundraising rock concert Turtle Rock, we decided to organize a second edition with the same recipe: 3 (different) bands, a raffle, an auction and merchandise sales. Again it was a very nice event and a lot of money was raised, which is welcome for a donation dependent organization as Sea Turtle Conservation Curacao.
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