Day 34- The best day ever (Boat Day and Night Survey)

I woke up at 6am incredibly excited. Steph and I met in passing as we got ready and begun chanting boat day boat day dancing around before continuing to pack our bags. At 6:45am Kate, Marina, Steph and I picked up Steve and Praggi and headed to Sateurs to meet Dragon, Zoe, Dave and Benson. When we got there we prepped ourselves and got into Dragons Boat. 

The free diving team included Zoe (an incredibly muscular man with caramel colour dreadlocks and looked like aqua man), Benson, Praggi and Steve (two locals from night surveys). 

Kate, Dave, Steph and I sat in the front of the small wooden boat while the others sat behind and Dragon steered. Steph was holding a travel mug of Coffee in one hand and Kate told her she was being optimistic about it not spilling but steph thought it would okay so held onto it. But when Dragon started up the boat we were literally flying through the air bumping up and down on the waves and crashing down and the coffee went flying all over my face... luckily was not hot enough to burn but my face smelt of coffee for ages. It was so much fun though, Steph and I couldn’t stop laughing and squealing the whole journey, it was like a really exhilarating roller coaster ride mixed with a giant log flume every time we came crashing down after a huge wave 🌊. I wanted to film some of the journey out but it was way to rough. 

The journey out to the islands took about 45 minutes. Once we got out there the free divers got into the water leaving the 6 of us in the boat. We started at the Isle of Ronde. The free divers caught 5 turtles in this area. The first 3 being Sub adult Green turtles and then a small juvenile hawksbill turtles and then a juvenile green. It was my job to measure the carapace notch to notch and notch to tip and then the widest part across the opposite way. Marina was scribe. She has to note down the GPS location, time, species, whether it was a juvenile, Sub adult or adult and the condition of the turtle (parasites, injuries and diseases) Steph would call out tag numbers and pass me the applicator and I got the job of tagging the turtles which was really cool. It’s a bit like giving them an ear piercing, it’s a metal tag with an ID number on. We tag them on either notch 1, 2 or 3 (depending which is biggest) on their front left and right flippers. I only had one misfire and the others I tagged successfully. The turtles don’t flinch or anything. Kate and Dave would them take a blood sample from the neck of the turtles, they were struggling to get any from the sub adult greens though. 

The second turtle we had was a sub adult green that was very feisty and she slipped from Daves grip and scratched four of us on our legs before we got her calmed down again with a towel over her eyes. But she was fine once we had measured her and we’d release them as soon as we were done. We had to work fast as the divers were finding them quickly and we didn’t want them out the water for long. At one point we had 3 turtles on the boat, which isn’t a huge boat at all and the sub adults are pretty big. 

We then moved to the channel where the divers found a juvenile green for us which I scribed for and Marina measured and tagged. Finally we moved round to the isle of Caille where we found a juvenile green and an adult female hawksbill who was huge. We found 8 in total which is the most they’ve had on the boat this week 🙂. It was so much fun, I loved every minute of it.

We headed back to shore and back to the house for showers and a chilled afternoon, I was exhausted after all the sea breeze. The boat ride back was just as exciting and I was sprayed by more sea and was pretty soaked from the journey back alone. It was my job to pack the night survey bags.

Grace and Kirsten cooked dinner, they made aubergine parm which was breaded aubergine in a tomato sauce baked with cheese on top with a serving of spaghetti and salad. It was super yummy. At 19:30 Steph, Marina and I picked up Steve and Sharka for Night Survey. 

I went on the second run with Sharka and the others went on the first run. The others saw a female laying on their first run and then saw a second one and called the radio so I was able to go out and see her lay and film a bit as well which was really cool. She might be the last Leatherback adult I see while I’m here so it was really nice to see her. We also saw loads of hatchling tracks! And I rescued one that was stuck on its back in the sand.  I didn’t see any more adults that night but a few fire flies which are cool.