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Published: March 16th 2007
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Nesting leatherback
This is what we hope to see sometime soon!, and will probably be seeing quite a lot of over the next few months. Since we don't have any pictures of our own yet I got this 'uncopywrighted' picture from: http://www.seaturtles.org/images/photoarchive/photos/leather_nesting3.JPG Hello everyone!
Once again it’s been a long time since we’ve updated the sight. We always talk about it, yet somehow all those great ideas infrequently turn into blog updates.
CRICKET
Right now the schools and also the program for adults with disabilities are closed for 2 weeks for an early ‘Easter Break.’ I realize it’s not yet Easter, but some of the first games of World Cup Cricket are being held here, which is a HUGE deal for an island of 36,000 (47,000 if you count sister island, Nevis). I’ve had a couple people back in the states mention different talk show hosts joking about it, saying cricket games are being held in St. Kitts then asking…. “what’s that? Where’s St. Kitts??” Before we were sent to live here I would’ve been right there with them, wondering where St. Kitts was, so I suppose I see their point. =) It's good exposure for the country! Anyhow, Matt and I are volunteering for the games since our other main programs are closed right now. We had training for working at the games on some random evenings as well as a few Saturdays over the past few months (and all I’ll say about that is no matter how many times they say “be there to start promptly at 10” and I know that won’t happen, we always show up on time and end up sitting there frustrated when 11:15 rolls around and we’ve still not started…sighhh. I guess it’s probably a good thing that we haven’t entirely lost our sense of timeliness, however I’m not sure it can hold up another 17 or 18 months. We may have to be re-trained in a hurry once we get back to the states to start grad school!).
Wednesday was the first match: Australia vs. Scotland. I’d never seen a cricket match in my life, and Matt had watched a little bit on local TV and read up on the rules, but other than that it was new for him too. We’re both ushers in the stands, showing people to their seats, etc. We got picked up around 5am by a bus that drove around the island picking up volunteers, as the regular local buses don’t run that early. By the time we got off work at 3pm (the game started at 9ish and lasted until after 5) I was actually a little hesitant to leave, which really surprised me. I’d gone in with the mindset of “how on earth can anyone watch an 8-hour game and have it hold their interest the whole time?!” (and believe it or not, a game that long can still end in a tie! In fact some games last up to 5 days!...but luckily the World Cup games are ‘shortened’ matches, lasting only a day each) I’m sure my amusement was at least half due to the Scottish fans dressed in kilts and singing and chanting endless cheers! To my dismay though, when I looked up the final score later that night on ESPN.com (after Matt laughed and said “they don’t have cricket scores on ESPN!!” =) haha!), I found out that the Australian team had won.
Anyhow, fans seemed confused when they’d ask what we were doing there and we’d tell them we usually work in the schools and other related programs, but that they’re closed right now. They'd ask “why would schools close for this?” And “It doesn’t seem like there’s many locals at the game.” Which is true…and the most clear answer I can come up with is that they have to use the school buses, which are the only buses I’ve ever seen on the island, to get the volunteers and many of the security and other workers to the games. Unfortunately, the bus that was supposed to pick us up on Wednesday crashed on the way, so now the island is down a bus. I’d be more worried about the people than the bus, of course, but everyone was fine. Matt and I were waiting by the road a couple of miles further down when we heard about the crash (another volunteer who was on the bus sent us a message), and we were told that they were getting another bus to come get the people. We immediately began calculating how long that might take….30 minutes to contact the correct government official to find out where another bus might be parked, 20 minutes for them to get fully awake and contact someone else regarding the bus, 30 minutes for that person to find an available driver, 10 or 15 minutes to get the driver to the bus—longer if he/she doesn’t have a car and lives on the opposite side of the island and has to wake up someone else to get a ride there…..etc. etc. We thought we maybe should try walking since we knew they’d be short a lot of volunteers if they got there as late as we estimated. And then only 30 minutes or so later we heard that they were already getting on another bus! “What?? How is this possible?” we thought to ourselves. It turns out there was another bus not too far behind them picking up other workers for the game and it had just enough room to squeeze everyone on. I was in awe at how smoothly it had worked out! =) I just realized that this might be the most boring entry yet… Sorry! Just wait until we take a picture of ourselves in our bright orange uniforms, though!! That’ll make it all worth it! That’s right-- orange shirt, hat, fanny pack, backpack, the whole works!
TURTLES
Turtles!! The 24th of February we had our first Leatherback sea turtle nest of the season here in St. Kitts. There have been 6 or 7 nests so far, though Matt and I are yet to see actually see a turtle. We’ve each spent 2 nights out, from around 8:30pm to 6 or 6:30am (they come up to the beach when it’s dark), walking about a 2-mile stretch of beach looking for the turtles to come up to lay their eggs. We’re told that in a couple of weeks there will usually be 2 coming up per night, as opposed to one every couple of nights, so if we don’t see one sooner we’ll surely be seeing them then! Between early morning cricket and all night turtles we are both on absurd sleeping (and eating!) schedules right now.
We’re trying to do what they call ‘saturation tagging' as well as ‘saturation blood samples’ with the Leatherbacks this season. This means having people on the beach all night, every night, to make sure we are able to tag each turtle that comes up to lay—or at least as close to this as possible. It also means taking a blood sample from each turtle, each time it comes up. I don’t know number estimates for this beach off the top of my head, but assume for example there are 40 turtles laying on a certain beach this year. Each turtle will lay multiple times over a span of 4 or 5 months, meaning that this single beach will have around 200 nests. The beach we are working on is the main nesting beach in St. Kitts. There is one other, shorter beach, but due to limited volunteers and resources we stick to the main beach for our night monitoring and tagging. (There is also a particularly troublesome individual originally from the US who takes tourists out on expensive ‘ecotourism turtle experiences’ without ever having had a permit to monitor and tag the turtles (much less a work permit allowing him to charge people). He allows abundant flash photography -which can greatly disorient the turtle, and he’s even been known to allow people to sit on turtle’s backs or dump beer on the eggs to ‘christen’ them. He is said to be quite abrupt and aggressive when confronted on the beach….so sadly, this just further encourages our avoidance of the second local nesting beach.)
Sometime soon I'll try to write a little 'fun facts' page about leatherbacks to post-- they're such amazing animals!!
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