Tag: night patrols

A lot has happened since the last blog post. And I mean A LOT. So where to begin? I’ll probably try to tell our story about the 2022 turtle nesting season in chronological order, even though I might forget a few things.

Let’s start with July!

Earlier in June, Melvin and me decided to double the size of the hatchery as we prepared ourselves for Hawksbill nesting season (this species starts to nest sooner than all the others). Remember: The Eastern Pacific Hawksbill turtle prefers to nest on the small beaches in the Padre Ramos estuary which we don’t patrol ourselves, so we only buy a small portion of the nests while the big majority goes to the other turtle project called “Casa Carey” – those guys have been around for several years already and specialize on the protection of the critically endangered Hawksbills.
Our very first Hawksbill nest was delivered to us on the 2nd of July, and altogether we incubated 17 nests of this species.

Also in July, we received our first intern for the season: Tammy from China who is studying biology in the UK and found out about us through her university. Tammy was super passionate about nature photography and birds, while she had never worked with turtles before. Having lived in big cities for all her life, she was astonished by the clear night sky full of (shooting) stars, and a little bit frightened by all the critters and mammals living on our property. With Tammy, we started going on night patrols and also had some very first encounters with our beloved Olive Ridley turtle – we buried the first nest of this species on the 29th of July.