Day 4 and 2nd Night Survey

I’ve just got back from my second night survey, we only saw one female attempting to nest but after body pitting a few times she returned to the sea without laying. One thing about not seeing many turtles is that it means you have to do more patrols of the beach as they take less time so you get less sleep between runs. I was out with Steve (one of the local staff) Tom and Mandy. I’m feeling pretty awake now though, the cold shower wakes me up so I think I’ll read this morning rather than try and sleep some more. I was hoping to see hatchlings last night but I didn’t, the others saw some yesterday, but I’ve got plenty of time to see some yet! It’s been quite a slow season this year, there’s normally a 4 year cycle with the fourth being a high volume nesting year here and this year is the fourth so they’ve been expecting bigger numbers but at the moment they’ve seen less this season than last year. They’re on 499 total activities and 377 total nests at the moment.

Yesterday was Day 4 of the trip out of 63 😊 I woke up just after 7 and read my book in the morning and planned my data sheets for my dissertation data collection.  It was raining really hard but at 12:30 Tom, Kate, Mandy, Talitha and I left the house to go to a local school 20mins away. Tom was giving a lesson on pollution to a class of children about 12 years old,  teaching them about plastic pollution, air pollution, greenhouse gases and bio accumulation. At the end of his presentation the rain had stopped so we did a campus clean up with the kids, each taking a group of 5 to find as much litter as possible. I was overseeing a group of girls who were very interested in my hair dye, how soft my hair is and whether they’d see me next week. They were really sweet and founds loads of litter to fill the bag. Tom rewarded them all with pencils for collecting the rubbish. A group girls surrounded Talitha again and quizzed is on where we were from, whether we had brothers and sisters, what colour house we were in at school and how old we were, they also all wanted to have their arms around us at the same time and then hugged us goodbye when the school bell went. When the bell went all the younger classes came out and some of the really little ones were realllyyy cute 😊

Apparently children in Grenada act as if rain is toxic and won’t go out in it at all! Which is quite funny, they even leave school early if there’s a break in the rain so that they won’t have to walk home  in it.

Once we were back I did some more reading and we planned what other trips we want to do this week. We might go to the rum distillery and chocolate factory on Friday 🍫 and maybe a waterfall on Saturday after swimming class. It was also my job to get the kit bags ready for the night survey. This means getting together the tape measures, clipboards, nest boxes etc.  For dinner Steph made a Veg Frittata with potato and pumpkin mash which was really yummy. But I was going to make a veg frittata this week so I’ll have to think of something else! After dinner I finished my 3rd book (going to start the 4th now) and packed ready for the night survey.




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