Day 10- Hatchery Invader

We had two successful egg lays that we witnessed. One we managed to retrieve the eggs the second she was too far through so we couldn't. There were several false crawls I think as many as 4 or 5. One was right near the camp and turned around by the shipwreck outside. It is believed to be an old Thai ship which crashed during a storm several years ago. It's a very old wooden hull. The one we managed to retrieve the eggs from I found in my patrol, I observed her at the edge of the beach by the vegetation and thought she was body pitting so got Nick. Nick thought she was camouflaging but he said it is hard to tell as similar movements are some for both. We checked back in 20 minutes and she had moved and started body pitting again. We thought after failing first and not moving that far she'd do a false crawl. Instead we left her again and when Nick checked back she was laying and had moved again. We managed to retrieve 113 eggs from her. As well as getting carapace measurements and facial photos. Last thing we did that evening was released some hatchlings that had developed enough into the sea a total of around 30. In the morning I made breakfast and tidied up the house. It stormed a lot last night so I stayed in the house with Nick rather than the hammock. As I thought my back was very burnt from falling asleep on the beach, so I applied aloe vera on it to help cool it. I was just chilling in the hammock and I saw sand kicking up by the hatchery, I then went over to investigate. When I got there I saw a water monitor had got into the hatchery and already destroyed one of the nests.

I called Nick and we tried to push it into the hole it entered in but kept climbing against the fence not under it. Nick tried using a stick to make the hole bigger and then some rope but still it wouldn't leave. The lizard was hissing and tail flicking us, it was getting just as annoyed at us as we were at it. Eventually I tied the rope to make a large hole pushed it into the corner at first he went over it then the tail fell in the hole I came round the front and he turned and left the hatchery and ran into the sea. Nick then called fisheries and mended the hole in the ground. There were already several eggs that had either been eaten or broken and ants and other bugs had started getting involved. We collected all the egg casings and dead hatchlings we could and put them in a bucket so we could find out how many we had lost. When fisheries got here we explained what happened and they went to assess the damage. Exploring the nest they found two hatchlings still alive that had got to safety. I got to hold them and put them into a bucket of hatchlings ready to be released later. It just goes to show even with our help the nests are not 100% safe as we can't watch the hatchery 24/7. I had some lunch, and then had a nap. After my nap I tried photographing some of the tree shrews who live around our camp.

It was a pretty chilled afternoon not a lot happened. At 6 or was time for Rachel and Seb to leave and go back to the village. They were replaced by 4 school kids. All boys from Tonbridge wells of all places, it's about 1 hour from where I live. With them was there "teacher" I use inverted commas as he was one of the teacher's sons who lives in Australia and is a dive instructor. He had helped out on a trip last year in Nepal and asked to help again. When they got there the guys were excited to settle in and explore the beach etc. so we let them have some time before dinner. They had brought over ready-made packet dinners and brought one for me and Nick. Just a simple dish rice, veg and chicken but it was so good having chicken considering I hadn't had any meat since Sunday. After dinner the guys settled down and we delegated shifts for each of them. I went out on first patrol at 8pm with all of them showed them some previous tracks answered some questions. Then headed back arrived about 8:30pm, so Nick did a 9:30pm patrol and found this turtle appearing to body pit at the end of the beach. I went to wake the guys but only the teacher and one other got up the rest were out of it. They had done a really intensive few days travelling and they all seemed pretty out of it. We headed down she had built her body pit then started her egg chamber we thought it was going to be nice and easy then she stopped and started moving. She didn’t settle for another 2 hours and when she did she had attempted 2 more body pits and ended up somewhere 40m from where she started. We woke the other guys up and Nick began extraction when she was laying. I did the counting and she laid 91 eggs, Nick recognised this female as one that had only laid a couple of weeks before hand so it was impressive she laid that many. Later on we spotted another female coming up, this female was a lot more decisive and was happy with her first body pit. She dug it quite quickly as well and started on her egg chamber. I was slightly worried this bit might make her change locations as she was near a rock and as she was digging I could see some of the Rock in the chamber. She carried on though and eventually was ready to lay. I dug underneath her flipper and started collecting the eggs. When she got to 80, Jarr one of the fisheries staff called she'd stop at 95 eggs,  I called that she'd lay 104. She had been laying for a while but she was laying 3 or 4 at a time,  she had laid over 95 but finished on 103 so I was close. My shift finished after that turtle and no more turtles laid after that so I didn't miss anything.