I spend half of my time working on the field..or rather beaches . On April 15, my supervisor, Rahayu; a volunteer from Germany, Nina; a beach patrol worker, Pak Mat Dahan; and I went for patrol as usual in Ma'Daerah Turtle Sanctuary. The other team, River (my colleague), Vincent (volunteer from New Zealand) and Karina (volunteer from UK) patrolled at Chakar Hutan which is next to Ma'Daerah. After a long 1.5km walk towards the end of the beach, my team took a break. We just laid down on the sand looking up to the sky with millions of stars. That's what we called a million star hotel. All of us fall asleep until we heard River's voice on the walkie-talkie asking if we got any turtle. It was nearly 4 in the morning. "Kosong", I replied, which means non. Then, I woke everyone up and we walked back to the sanctuary. It was another turtleless night for us, the eighth consecutive night of frustration. I walked lazily..dragging my feet. About 5 minutes later, I saw a dark line from the water edge up to the beach 10 metres away from where I stood. "It could be a turtle track", I told Rahayu. We went nearer. Confirmed. "YES!".

We missed her by an hour. She already laid her eggs and was 'sand-bathing' near the nest. Before she finished bathing, we had to tag her on both frontal flippers. Pak Mat Dahan used his celeng to locate the nest and marked it. Then, he tagged the turtle. Apparently, she has been tagged before. On her left front flipper, there was a tag number IF2907. So Pak Mat Dahan tagged the right flipper using my tag applicator. The number: MY3101 - the first number of my tag series.


Pak Mat Dahan ready to tag the turtle.


He's tagging her right flipper.

After tagging the turtle, we started to measure the curve carapace length (ccl), curve carapace width (ccw), the width of the track, number of eggs laid, diameter of the eggs, etc. Before, the eyes need to be close so that she will not move.


River closing her eyes.


Din (hatchery worker) calming her, me putting on the head lamp while Karina looks on.


Me calming her down, saying goodbye at the same time.

Barnacles are parasites to turtles. They have to be removed from a turtle's body if found. On this turtle, we found 5 big barnacles.


Din removing barnacles.

As soon as she crawled back to the sea, we started to collect the eggs. The nest was dug-out by Vincent cause he has long arms . All the eggs were placed in a bucket, 10 were sampled for their sizes. The turtle reached the water at 5:55am. After the eggs were collected, the happy people went back to the sanctuary to bury the eggs at a safer place. The hatchery was not assembled yet at that time. We got to watch sunrise that morning. What a wonderful feeling..


Vincent digging the nest.


River giving a peace sign as Nina looks on.


Selecting 10 eggs to measure.


Checking-out for last egg. Putting everything to paper - the procedure that needs to be followed.


A total of 115 eggs were laid on our very first encounter with turtles. Thank you everyone .