Day 61-64- Tiga Ruang the Reopening

The first night of Tiga Ruang was slightly disappointing as there were no turtle sightings not even a false crawl. I did the early shift with the volunteers however Maria wasn't feeling very well. I don't know what is about Tiga Ruang but someone always feels ill or has a problem. It was nice to be back at Tiga Ruang as during the day it is so relaxing, a mixture of chilling in the hammocks, sunbathing and watching things on my tablet. I forgot to mention something that was really annoying when we came back to Tiga Ruang, finding that someone had stolen one of our hammocks that was attached to our palm trees at the front of camp. I have recently got into "It's always sunny in Philadelphia" a TV show my best friend Jessie has been trying to get me into the last two years. I have not missed tourists asking me if they can put their rubbish in our bin and if we sell water. The next night we still had no turtles come up and nest but this time there was a false crawl. On the last night we had 3 turtles come up to the beach, the first one came up at 8pm at the start of Tiga Ruang Tengar. It was the first patrol we did and had only just got dark, I went to see what it was doing and it had already started body pitting. I went back to get all the equipment as I didn't expect there to be a turtle this early. She was happy in her first body and made her egg chamber. Just as she was about to lay when it started to rain, this meant we couldn't take the eggs. We still recorded carapace measurements and facial photos, Nick recognised this turtle as one that had come earlier on in the season which he had named after his Grandmother. The next turtle we spotted came just after 9 at the end of Tiga Ruang Tengar, it had got up and over some steep sand but then gone and fallen into a dried up river bed. I watched her as she got herself stuck under a bamboo stick. I removed the bamboo stick and she started to body pit. She body pitted then started her egg chamber but then moved on. Much of the sand she was in was dirty and not suitable for nesting. Eventually this female started headbutting a rock and heading towards somewhere she would get stuck so Nick grabbed her and pointed her back towards the sea. We helped encourage her to go back to the sea so hopefully she'll come back later or another day. The last turtle turned up  on Tiga Ruang Besar about 11pm this turtle body pitted 3 times, and egg chambered twice before settling to lay her eggs. I collected her eggs and Maria helped me by counting the eggs. She laid 73 eggs, after this we took carapace measurements and facial ID. there were no more turtles after that and I got a good night sleep.
In the morning our boat was at 10am, we got back to the village and went for lunch. I went for the buffet and got a huge plate of rice vegetables and beef for 13RM. The beef at the buffet is definitley my favourite thing to get for lunch. After lunch I took the volunteers out for Snorkel Tour. Our boatman was Mat Lias he is great always nice to talk to and he always tells me about interesting things he sees. He told me him and his mate had seen dolphins coming back from Rawa. We started our tour at Shark point but we didn't see much as it was quite choppy. I did get to see a box fish but he swam away before I could get a photo. Our next stop was Fish point there was lots of nice coral and I saw a huge group of needle fish. The final stop on our journey was Turtle Beach/Tiga Ruang Meningis. It was nice and quiet and I saw lots of fish and a couple of baby sharks. The highlight was watching the Clown Fish coming out of the anemones when I was diving down to get a closer look.

In the evening it was me and Hazel cooking we cooked Bee Hoon noodles with vegetables in soy sauce. I am going to try to get some in the UK as they are really nice especially with  mushrooms and soy sauce.