We tried to not move on Omani time but failed miserably at this attempt to be at the turtle reserves before 8:30 pm for our tour. We still got a tour and were able to see some turtles but apparently there were not very many out compared to what usually are around each night. We saw a mother turtle laying about 100 eggs before she dug up a decoy nest a meter next to her real nest which she covered up with sand. The many baby turtles we saw coming from the sand and making their journey out to the wild ocean were so small and delicate looking. I felt really nervous I was going to accidentally step on one of them. There was no light allowed down there and we only went by the light of the moon. Occasionally the guides would shine their special flashlights on a turtle to look at more closely. I honestly felt really uncomfortable being down there. There were at least 50 people down on the beach. The baby turtles were hatching out of their eggs underneath the sand and just digging their ways out from several different locations. I felt like I was going to step on them or someone else might accidentally do so. I felt like I was intruding on their space.
This uncomfortable feeling I felt until we left the beach about an hour and a half later raised some questions in my mind. There seems to be a very fine line between encouraging people to care more about the environment and endangered species and protecting them. The green turtles who nest at this beach location that is a natural reserve now are an endangered species. The many footprints that left a thick layer over the designated nesting beach left me wondering if this really was okay that this was happening. Could we be doing more to protect the environment and our precious endangered species?
Later, I learned that this was not the only beach that is protected for these turtles. This particular beach is for people to go and watch them and there are other beaches that apparently are completely untouched and left only for the green turtles. That made me feel much better.
About 100 turtles come to Ras Al Jinz each night (the only beach visitors can visit to observe). The peak of the nesting season is from July to September. From September to November, the most number of baby turtles hatch each night and set the start of their life journeys into the vast ocean waters. Earlier this year, nearly 400 Green turtles were marked by rangers at Ras Al Hadd Reserve in order to track the number of turtles that nest each season in the area. So far, over 7,000 have come to nest since July 2011. Basically, this means there is a very large turtle population in this country of coastlines and warm waters. The fact that there is a high population of this endangered species must mean that the Sultanate of Oman is doing many things correctly to properly conserve the animals.
It was really cute to watch the baby turtles paddle their way across the sand to the sea. They’re existence is so tiny and it’s just amazing that these small things just somehow wake up from their eggs and have an instinctive calling to get across the sand to the sea nearby. It’s amazing. It was also exciting to watch a female turtle who had just spent a few hours laying and burying her hundred eggs in the sand work hard to get back to the ocean by pushing her paddles into the sand to move just a couple inches at a time. She would stop after several pushes to rest. She must of been so tired after laying eggs and then burying her eggs and then moving to the sea. Sounds like a lot of work.
It was cool to learn that Ras al Jinz is a world-famous excavation site with artifacts found from as long ago as 4,000 BC. You can even go and stay at the hotel accommodations they have there that include the evening tour we went on and the 4 am tour to watch the turtles as well.
Overall, the experience was something I wish I could have done from the beach because I was generally uncomfortable with being so in the middle of the nesting area and worried I might step on a baby turtle or in the nests where I might crush a few eggs. It was a beautiful and memorable thing to see though.
I don't have any photographs from the reserve because I left my camera at home. No artificial light was allowed by visitors. Only the guides brought tiny flashlights so they could point some things out to us when they occurred.
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