Day 40 - Mt Carmel Waterfalls & Last ever Night Survey
Yesterday Rachael, Kirsten and I went on an adventure to Mt Carmel waterfalls. I had Avocado on toast for breakfast and We left the house at 10am and walked to Rose Hill to catch the bus to Grenville. We stopped off there for a little while and bought some snack stocks before catching another bus to the waterfalls which was about a 5 minute bus ride away. Normally the bus driver tells us where to get off, noting we are white people and clearly tourists but I think they forgot about us this time so we went about 2 minutes past but the end of the bus route wasn’t far at all and they just stopped at the waterfall stop on the way back for us.
The walk to the falls was about 10 minutes through beautiful green forest, it was almost like a forest walk at home just with even more luscious green plants. When we made it to the main water fall there were a few American tourists there. It was so hot we were glad to change to our swimming costumes and go for a swim at the bottom of the waterfall. The water was quite cold but it was nice to cool down and refresh. I even saw lots of freshwater fish swimming around with me. We then headed back to further along the river to a second pool we could swim in, the water was passing over another smaller double fall which one local kid wearing jeans was sliding down on his bum. There was no way we were doing it in our swimming costumes, it looked fun but would’ve sliced our bums! I went for a swim in the pool at the bottom and then we headed back to the bus stop.
We had a smooth journey back and got on the buses quite quickly. Kirsten and Tom cooked dinner, it was absolutely delicious. They made veggie burgers from beans and split peas, toast, the best oven roasted fries, an avocado tomato carrot salad and then a plate of ‘toppings’ slices of avocado,
Onion and pepper for the burgers. It was very yummy.
Steph, Marina and I then headed out to collect Sharka and Lawson for Night Survey. I went on the first run with Steph and Sharka. We released a hatchling from the night before and saw many hatchling tracks. On our first run we were waiting at the other end for our half hour wait when Lawson radioed to tell us there were people on the beach flashing white lights around. We walked back to intercept them and found a group of tourists, we informed them that the nesting season is nearly over and the likelihood of them seeing an adult was very slim. We also asked them not to shine white light on the beach because it disorientates and can kill the hatchlings. The followed us back and weren’t argumentative at all thankfully. On my third run at 4am Steph, Sharka and I had just left the shed when we found an adult female emerging. She looked as though she was going to have a false crawl but she then started body putting and digging her nest very close to the water. We made the decision it was going to be a nest relocation as it was too close to the sea. I had to lay sideways behind her, parallel to the sea to stop myself being soaked by the waves when I caught her eggs and put them in the bucket to be relocated. We also noted she didn’t have any tags so I was given the job of tagging her left WC20521 and right WC20522, I did it much better than my first leatherback. She’s very probably the last leatherback adult I’ll see unless we get a day turtle again. We dug a nest hole further up along the beach and put the eggs in and covered.
We carried on to the end of the beach and waited out half hour. It was sunrise so we started to walk back to measure the hatched nests and relocated nest when we came across a nest hatching. Steph and I saw two turtles emerging from the sand which I’ve wanted to see the whole time I’ve been here. I’ve seen them making their way to the sand but never wiggling up and then out themselves without us pulling them out to release next morning. As we were about to put them in the bucket we looked over at the beach in front of us and both squealed. There were 45 hatchlings all making their way to the sea, really quickly and in the right direction exactly how I thought a hatch was meant to look. It looked like the whole floor was moving there were so many! It was amazing to see. We decided that there were too many to take to release so we watched them all make their way into the water. A couple got taken by birds out of the water but we stopped any getting them on the beach. After the excitement we then measured the distances for the other nests before heading back to the house. The perfect end to my last night survey!
The walk to the falls was about 10 minutes through beautiful green forest, it was almost like a forest walk at home just with even more luscious green plants. When we made it to the main water fall there were a few American tourists there. It was so hot we were glad to change to our swimming costumes and go for a swim at the bottom of the waterfall. The water was quite cold but it was nice to cool down and refresh. I even saw lots of freshwater fish swimming around with me. We then headed back to further along the river to a second pool we could swim in, the water was passing over another smaller double fall which one local kid wearing jeans was sliding down on his bum. There was no way we were doing it in our swimming costumes, it looked fun but would’ve sliced our bums! I went for a swim in the pool at the bottom and then we headed back to the bus stop.
We had a smooth journey back and got on the buses quite quickly. Kirsten and Tom cooked dinner, it was absolutely delicious. They made veggie burgers from beans and split peas, toast, the best oven roasted fries, an avocado tomato carrot salad and then a plate of ‘toppings’ slices of avocado,
Onion and pepper for the burgers. It was very yummy.
Steph, Marina and I then headed out to collect Sharka and Lawson for Night Survey. I went on the first run with Steph and Sharka. We released a hatchling from the night before and saw many hatchling tracks. On our first run we were waiting at the other end for our half hour wait when Lawson radioed to tell us there were people on the beach flashing white lights around. We walked back to intercept them and found a group of tourists, we informed them that the nesting season is nearly over and the likelihood of them seeing an adult was very slim. We also asked them not to shine white light on the beach because it disorientates and can kill the hatchlings. The followed us back and weren’t argumentative at all thankfully. On my third run at 4am Steph, Sharka and I had just left the shed when we found an adult female emerging. She looked as though she was going to have a false crawl but she then started body putting and digging her nest very close to the water. We made the decision it was going to be a nest relocation as it was too close to the sea. I had to lay sideways behind her, parallel to the sea to stop myself being soaked by the waves when I caught her eggs and put them in the bucket to be relocated. We also noted she didn’t have any tags so I was given the job of tagging her left WC20521 and right WC20522, I did it much better than my first leatherback. She’s very probably the last leatherback adult I’ll see unless we get a day turtle again. We dug a nest hole further up along the beach and put the eggs in and covered.
We carried on to the end of the beach and waited out half hour. It was sunrise so we started to walk back to measure the hatched nests and relocated nest when we came across a nest hatching. Steph and I saw two turtles emerging from the sand which I’ve wanted to see the whole time I’ve been here. I’ve seen them making their way to the sand but never wiggling up and then out themselves without us pulling them out to release next morning. As we were about to put them in the bucket we looked over at the beach in front of us and both squealed. There were 45 hatchlings all making their way to the sea, really quickly and in the right direction exactly how I thought a hatch was meant to look. It looked like the whole floor was moving there were so many! It was amazing to see. We decided that there were too many to take to release so we watched them all make their way into the water. A couple got taken by birds out of the water but we stopped any getting them on the beach. After the excitement we then measured the distances for the other nests before heading back to the house. The perfect end to my last night survey!
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