The turtle guys came to our tents at 1.30 in the morning. ‘The turtles are coming on to the beach,” they announced. I gathered my five-year-old in my arms and helped rouse the others sleeping in the 16 tents surrounding mine. ‘Time to get up!” I yelled. ‘The turtles are coming!”
Our group was made up of 40 learners at the American International School of Libreville in Gabon and their families. It comprised some 10 different nationalities, at least that many languages and all the colours of the rainbow.
We were camping out at Pangara, a sea turtle nesting beach on a peninsula just a short boat ride from Libreville. The turtle guys, as we affectionately called them, were employed by Aventures Sans Frontières (Adventures Without Borders), an outfit created by a couple of young Gabonese guys to help save turtles.
After observing the poaching of green sea turtles for their shells and the destruction of turtle nests for their eggs, these young men walked the whole coast of the West African country to ask Gabonese people to stop eating sea turtles and their eggs.
Their organisation, headed by Guy Phillip Sounguet, is now receiving help from other environmental groups such as the Wildlife Conservation Society and various embassies. They have built a wooden house just off the beach at Pangara, from where they offer guiding services and, more importantly, organised walks on to the beach to tag sea turtles and to rescue stuck turtles.
In the middle of the night, it was our time to go see the turtles. We split into groups of three and headed down to the beach. My group arrived first. ‘Turn off all flashlights,” the guide ordered us. ‘They will disturb the turtles.”
We stumbled after him in the soft sand, accompanied by the gentle sound of the surf. There was a new moon, so it was very dark, and the thought of some mysterious creature ahead made it all the more curious.
Then we saw her. A leatherback sea turtle, so named because they have no shells. The beaches of Gabon are important nesting sites for leatherback turtles, which are the most endangered of the sea turtles. These huge turtles with their fragile beaks can only eat jellyfish and they like the warm Atlantic waters near the equator because they are home to large populations of jellyfish.
The turtle we were looking at was as long across her back as a person lying down and weighed perhaps 400kg. In the light of the few stars, she was a huge shadow on the darkness of the beach. The guide carefully lit his lamp behind her so the light would not shine in her eyes.
My daughter gasped. To her, this was a monster. The monster was first moving her flippers as a child would play angel in the sand. ‘She’s sweeping off a nesting site,” the guide whispered.
Soon she began to use her back flippers to scoop sand up and out, until she had dug a hole about 80cm deep. Then she started laying her eggs. About the size of golf balls, they glistened in the sand as they fell.
More and more eggs piled up, getting gradually smaller. The guide pulled one of the smaller eggs out. ‘The infertile eggs on top maintain the temperature in the nest and provide food for the hatching babies,” he explained.
My daughter, seeing the eggs, understood that the monster wasn’t a monster but a mommy. We were able to go around and watch from the front as she covered her eggs with sand and started her camouflaging process. She looked at us with her red eyes and breathed heavily as she made more angels in the sand. Moving slowly down the beach, she made the same marks over several metres so that predators would not know the exact location of her eggs.
Finally, it was time for her to go back to the sea. She moved forward by awkwardly half-hopping on her front flippers. Suddenly, boom! She banged her head on a log. Confused, she turned around and started towards the savannah.
Our guide explained that when the turtles turn in the wrong direction they often mistake lights in houses along the beachfront for the white foam of the surf and end up going quite far into the savannah. If they are not discovered and pulled back into the sea (which can take four grown men and sometimes even a car), they can melt in the hot equatorial sun. Unwilling to take that risk, the guide used the turtle’s sensitivity to light to guide her around the log with the light of his torch.
Finally, with her last half-hop, she was in the water and, with a swish of her flippers, headed off into the ocean, never to see her babies.
After our night with the sea turtles, during which we even saw one hatchling, the children of the American International School of Libreville were enthralled. They wanted to help their new turtle friends, but what could a few children do?
They settled on the idea of a walk-a-thon. Learners went to people in the communities. ‘We want to help sea turtles,” they said and they told stories about the beautiful creatures and the poaching that could make them extinct.
These children, aged from three to 15 years, talked to their friends, their parents’ friends, their parents’ colleagues. They even talked to three ambassadors.
Three weeks after the night they first saw the turtles, the day of the big walk came. They walked in a rainforest preserve not far north of Libreville. The older and more adventuresome learners chose the long walk, which involved jumping over logs, crossing streams, avoiding spiny vines and careful wiggling amongst fallen trees and bushes. The younger learners walked 3km along a beautiful rainforest path.
Afterwards the children went back to their sponsors and proudly told them how they had walked to help the sea turtles. The money poured in. All in all, these 40 learners raised more than $1 500 to help Aventures Sans Frontières provide guides at the five nesting sites that they oversee.
This money could help them buy lamps and batteries to guide sea turtles to safety. It could help the guides purchase materials for presentations to more groups of people. If it can help the friendly ‘turtle guys” save just one turtle, the learners will have more than justified the hard work they put in.
What did the children learn? As their science teacher, I hope they now understand that an endangered animal is more than a poster hanging on a wall — it is a living creature in need of help. I also hope they realise that, working together, even the smallest children can be of great service to this world and its varied inhabitants.