Eye to eye with an armed poacher

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One moonlit night...

This actually happened, and I am glad it did. Without it I would have not understood the severity of the problem with poaching in Sri Lanka.

Markus and me were taking a night stroll on Kosgoda's moonlit beach. Actually this was just after a fruitless visit to TCP's beach patrol in Kosgoda. As we were walking we imagine what we would do if we saw an actual turtle coming to nest on an unprotected beach. The imagination was not fully developed, as we were interupted by fate playing a trick on us. Anyhow, we walked along the beach toward our hotel, and we saw turtle tracks. One way, and then in the bush we heard the sand being thrown about. A green turtle had made her way up to the vegetation at the far end of the beach, the same beach that partially was protected by the TCP. According to previous info, the neighbouring beaches are patrolled by regular fishermen hoping for some extra cash, wether its for the hatcheries, or the black market, who can say for sure?

We decided that our options were:

a) stay with the turtle for three days and protect it with our lives, until
the eggs are no good for omelette

b) call the TCP and they come and move the eggs to their beach,
although it envolves a less wanted act of manipulation

c) try and cover the tracks and hope that whe gets done with it before
there may be some fishermean approaching, and if there was, that
we would do our best to distract him

We decided to go for the third option, and stalked toward the tracks and started fainting them out by messing up the sand for a stretch of 20 meters. Then Markus sat down to guard while I checked in which nesting stage whe was in. Now she was doing the egg chamber requiring intricate detail work with the hind flippers. Me and Markus switched places so that he could get close to the turtle and see the behaviour.

Reality cathes up with us

As I sit and wait in the pretty well uplit beach my perifery suddenly catches on to some movement in the bushes not far from Markus and the turtle. The dark vegetation almost swallows the swift movements of the man running, crouched, towards Markus. I pace to Markus and tell him that there is somebody near. We can't see anybody but realise that our bag is still on the beach, where we sat guarding. I turn and stalk bag to get the bag.

Suddenly the man bursts out of the bushes and grabs the bag. Markus is quicker than I am, and is soon in the heels of the man, who decides to throw the bag, but then suddenly turns around, and has a knife with an 8 inch blade in his hand.

I cannot hear the conversation, but Markus puts his hands in the air, and calls to me, to stay away from the guy but get closer to him. Eventually the direction of the conversation changes and he calms down and the man says there is no problem, he wants no harm. To prove it we ask him to throw away his knife. He throws the knife into the dark vegetation lining the beach, but not very far.

We all shake hands and introduce ourselves and then go sit next to the turtle. It seemed like the most natural thing to do at the time, but looking at it in writing now, it is pretty amazing. We tell him we are married and he tells us he is 29 and has two children. And that he will take the eggs to the hatchery. After our visits at the hatcheries our trust for them was not particularly high. We wanted the eggs where they were, in the ground. That was the unspoken agreement of the two of us.

When the panting dinosaur started to lay, the man dug a little hole behind her rear, so as to enable that the actual egg laying could be witnessed. The man knealed down and started taking the eggs from the nest, laying them at the side of the turtle female. Markus had to air our conditions. We told him he could not take the eggs and that these eggs were staying in the ground. He got angry, but Markus put the eggs back into the egg chamer, insiting on that they stay there. We forced him away from the turtle, he hurried to get a palm leaf to throw into the nest as a marker to where it is, should he be denied access to the location until the turtle was gone.

Me and Markus were now seriously discussing strategy on how to save the eggs, but we switched to german, to avoid him understanding. We were talking about the police, calling TCP down to the beach, or taking the eggs ourselves to put in TCP sand, but this would surely upset the set out pattern of the way that things are done in the law of the jungle. And if we walk around with eggs, maybe WE are mistaken for egg poachers. Alot of things were going through our minds, as I saw him standing behind Markus jirking off! Massive distraction action off course, but not ignorable for sure! Markus turns around and tells him to stop. Markus and I start speaking again, and as soon as the guy takes out his dick again, I let Markus know, who pushes him away and tells him to stop once more. The guy now signals the torch down the beach. We knew it could be a fake attempt to scare us, but we had no idea if he had collegues down the beach. Markus and I continue to unravel the intensity of the situation in german but then the guy left the beach, and started searching in the vegetation where he threw his knife. We knew we had lost the race, and we took our stuff and hurried away over the rocks that marked the end of the beach.

I was constantly looking over my shoulder, feeling very much at unease and nervous about the behaviour of this poacher. Markus told me not to worry, he had won, and he was satisfied as long as he got his eggs, why would he come after us? Markus was right off course, and we reached the hotel safely. It took me three hours to wind down, drain from the involuntary adrenaline injection before I could sleep that night. I was definatly shaken, but it was one of my best experiences with turtles. Would I ever have understood the seriousness of the problem of poaching, had I not met one of my own? Poaching eggs, eating them or giving to hatchery, the result is the same with these bad hatcheries that only clainm to work with conservation. They don't contribute to the turtle population. What an ignorant and cruel world we live in. It is a big task to turn it around, but I am willing to give it alot of my attention in the future. :-)

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