Day 49-51- Bintang Pagi

Thursday evening at Tiga Ruang we got settled in it was me, Tammam, Nadia and Darshini.  I was doing the early shift with the volunteers as there were three of them and two of them were siblings we felt it was harsh to split them up. Before patrol we played cards and taught each other lots of different games. We went on patrol and the volunteers loved seeing all the stars, when there are no clouds it is so clear and you can see loads of constellations. These volunteers were really good fun to be around and I had definitely formed a really nice friendship with them. During the night we had some hatchlings to  release Due to complications we are no longer counting the number of hatchlings as this hasn't been done rest of the season. The nest loggers had also been lost which meant sex ratio could no longer be recorded which made it very frustrating for the team as we lost more data.

The next day was a standard Tiga Ruang day chilling round the beach, we had several tourists come up to us while at camp asking various questions. Lots wanted to get an opportunity to see hatchlings and one guy even came up asking to take his water bottle I told him to take it back to his resort as we have limited bin space and he replied with and I quote "Please take it as I don't want to litter this beautiful beach", some tourist really anger me. I managed to finish my book, the autobiography of Guy Martin "When you're dead you're dead". It was a really good read written very informally, talking about his career and work, an interesting inside look into behind the seasons of his TV series.

This was taken the week before

The next night I was set to do the late shift with the volunteers however from about 11 it started to storm and didn't stop til 4am. Nick had apparently gone out during the rain and found a turtle nesting and marked the nest. We are unable to take the eggs when it is raining as if they get wet they spoil. The girls were sleeping so me and Tammam got up and patrolled at 4:30, there were no turtles and as we were coming back we checked on the hatchery. I shined my head-torch and found that there were some hatchlings that had emerged. I looked to see how many and saw that red ants had got to a couple of nests as well. I went and got the key to the hatchery as fisheries staff weren't here as it had been stormy so they can't' get their boat in. I went inside with Tammam and collected as many hatchlings up as we could see. Some had unfortunately already died from monitor lizard or rats or crabs and some were badly bitten by ants. One little hatchling appeared nice and healthy but had lost a flipper. It is the sad part of the job seeing dead hatchlings but you have to think it is part of the natural life cycle. The turtles still have a better chance in the hatchery than they do if they were left open on Tiga Ruang as they would likely to be poached. 

After we collected the hatchlings I gave them to Nick to sort as some weren't ready to be released yet. It was about 5:45am by the time we were done with the hatchlings and I looked at my trousers and saw that I had about 7 or 8 red ants latched onto my legs. At 6:00am we patrolled the beach again and as we got past the rocks that divides Tiga Ruang Besar and Tengar I spotted turtle tracks. I followed the tracks and found a turtle body pitting. I left Tammam to keep an eye on the turtle while I went back to get the data sheets and a bucket for the eggs. Rarely do we get a turtle come up this late/early so this was very unusual. I got back to Tammam and she had moved onto a new body pit but this one appeared more promising. Nick came to see how we were doing and checked on the turtle. As she was digging the egg chamber he went to wake Nadia and Darshini up. As they got there she was about to start laying, Tammam was on egg counting responsibility. This female laid 107 eggs, this was quite a lot considering time of season. I took carapace measurements and Nick got the face photos. Nick took the eggs back to camp while I waited with the volunteers for her to finish closing her egg chamber and camouflage. She didn't submerge til 8:30am, we were slightly worried tourists were gonna turn up before she left the beach but luckily no one turned up. 

The next day we all got some well needed sleep, one of my favourite thing about Tiga Ruang is chilling in the hammocks. Later on we played cards again and went for a snorkel, during the snorkel I saw a jellyfish on the surface that was at least 50cm in diameter. We had been out quite a while and I said to the guys I was going to go back. As I put my head in the water to swim back there was this giant Titan Trigger Fish right in front of me that scared the crap out of me. Trigger fish aren't always aggressive mainly when they are nesting but they are still very intimidating. 

https://adlayasanimals.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/the-titan-triggerfish-a-voracious-predator-being-cleaned-by-a-cleaner-wrasse-at-over-800000-square-kilometres-a-pitcairn-island-no-take-marine-reserve-would-be-over-three-times-the-area.jpg?w=640

The final night I was doing the early shift, in between patrols we all watched Pirates of the Carribean 2 on my tablet. While we were watching Jarr one of the Fishery staff was watching over our shoulders. Jarr is very funny and likes to play tricks. He kept making comments during the film for example when the Kraken appeared he was like Ooooo big octopus and he had brought petrol for the generator and kept offering it as orange juice. That night on patrol we had no turtles nest, we did however release lots of hatchlings from the night before and some from a nest that emerged that night.When we got back to the Village the next morning we found out that the turtle that had nested in the morning was a new turtle, this explained he high number of eggs laid. As she was a new one me and the volunteers got to name her, there were a few choices but we eventually all settled on Bintang Pagi which means Morning Star in Malay.