Tiny Flippers

All along Sri Lanka’s southern coast, evidence of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami is prevalent. In between tourist towns, ruined walls and remains of gutted, faceless homes have been left to crumble. With no tourist income in the area, there is little reason or financial means to bother tearing them down or building them back up. In some places, shops spring up like weeds within the collapsing buildings. And on each of our bus rides, I was overwhelmed by the number of roadside graveyards, wondering if they were tsunami victims.

Among the devastation, Sri Lanka’s turtle hatcheries took a particularly hard hit. Many of them, though they had been in business for decades, are run complete off donations and volunteer work. So, I figured that we should surely go put our money to good use, donating to the rebuilding turtle hatcheries in the area. Kosgoda holds the highest concentration of turtle hatcheries; it is the only place where, of the five species of sea turtle that lay eggs on Sri Lanka, all five come to nest.

Since Sri Lankans consider sea turtle eggs to be a delicacy, and the hatcheries have a hard enough time with natural predators, the hatcheries pay a higher-than-market price to all local fishermen who bring in turtle eggs. They then put them in a “natural incubator” (sand box) until they are ready to hatch. Since turtles hatch at night, using the reflection of the moon as a guide back to the sea, the hatcheries rig a system wherein an artificial light lures the hatchlings into a box instead.

Baby turtles, already susceptible to birds and other predators, are especially vulnerable when they are first born. Not only are their eyes not yet open fully, but their bellybuttons aren’t closed; it’s like ringing a dinner bell for all nearby predators. The hatcheries keep the new turtles in tanks of seawater for three days, by which point their eyes are open, their bellybuttons sealed, and they are ready to go. On the night of the third day, the hatchery workers, along with any volunteers lucky enough to be there, release the baby sea turtles under the cover of darkness.

In addition to giving baby turtles a helping hand on their way to survival, the hatcheries take in wounded sea turtles. Injured turtles can be nursed to health and then released back into the ocean; turtles that have lost limbs and would typically die in the wild remain at the hatcheries, helping to educate local school children (and us tourists). Rare albino turtles, massive and majestic, don’t end up in the wild at all, their luminescence making them immediate prey.

There are obviously many people who are opposed to the turtle hatcheries’ interference with nature. But you have to figure, with sea turtle numbers dwindling, even one more turtle that survives is a small difference.