Turtles All The Way Down June 8
One of the leatherback mothers of Matura, registered as Mamisima Maeve by my colleague, has traveled as far as Newfoundland in pursuit of jellyfish. The feeding frenzies throughout the Atlantic would make for marvelous David Attenborough moments, but they have never been witnessed. Indeed, no one even has an idea what the males are doing during this nesting period, which ends next month. There is so little we know about the secret lives of turtles.
On the rugged eastern coast, a steep trail descends through jungle pine to the Matura River. The only sound is the persistent cackle of a toucan, the first ever seen in the wild by Maeve—not the turtle but our brilliant Irish biologist. The air smells of wood smoke from nearby bush fires, producing rays of illuminated particulates over green pools. Sweaty hikers take to the water, while Francis scans the perimeter for Mappipe, a venomous pit viper with chameleon-like abilities to absorb the colors of its surroundings. He saw one here last week as thick as his wrist and over four-feet long. I am completely satisfied seeing none today.
After dark, the moon is a shrinking crescent on Matura Beach, 8 km of desolate yellow sand, which serves as prime nesting real estate for leatherbacks, greens, and hawksbills. Tonight we have a job to do that will stretch well beyond midnight—tagging and measuring Mamisima arrivals.
Under red lamplight, we comb the southern end of the beach and quickly stumble upon some disoriented hatchlings that are destined to become meals for dogs or Corbeaux. Students attempt to coax them to life with gentle caresses, but this may only serve to screw up their compasses and natural affections. If the young palm-size ones somehow manage to survive, a strange encounter may occur forty years hence when a homesick leatherback tries to lay its eggs at the International School of Port of Spain.
We soon find an adult settling in for an extraordinary deposit of a hundred eggs. She excavates a cavity about 3-feet deep, drops her treasure, and tenderly pats down the sand above it with flippers strong enough to break an arm. First we establish whether she has been tagged before. This requires sight identification of metallic clips on the rear flippers, as well as a tri-corder scan of the right shoulder and neck for an imbedded GPS chip.
Our first turtle is apparently new to the area. She has no tag. It is time to get to work quickly before she finishes laying and returns to the sea. I face her directly, staying close to her sandy head so the front flippers do not take me off my feet, and check for any obvious injuries, as instructed. Her forehead is as hard as a helmet, her neck and shoulders thick like an elephant hide, her ridged shell as polished as a fiberglass Corvette. With a tape, I measure the shell as 169 cm long and 120 cm at its widest. The largest of these creatures can reach over 300 cm and weigh a metric ton. I feel like I am tailoring Orson Welles for a tuxedo.
Then come the invasive procedures, starting with the GPS chip, administered with a small syringe gun in the right shoulder muscle, like a vaccination. The metal flipper tags are applied with pliers. If any of this is causing pain, the animal is simply too exhausted to resist, instead occupying a trance-like state, with audible gasps at the release of each egg, the last of which is a yolk-less ping pong ball. Like most data in Trinidad, all of the important numbers are recorded with pencil and paper in the darkness. Much of it will be lost, but the same can be said of the turtles themselves.
Another mother, at 149 cm, labors to find the best nesting spot. As she sweeps aside sand, I am suddenly blanketed in electric-blue sand. I brush her shell, and the whole thing sparkles with magical bioluminescence. She has come ashore covered with dinoflagellates. When the light fades on my legs, I slap them, and the magical creatures fire anew.
Meanwhile, an apocryphal woman is asked by the Hindu seeker, “What does the earth rest on?“
She says, “On the back of a giant turtle.“ When the seeker asks what that giant turtle rests upon, she replies, “Another turtle,“ and when pressed further, she asserts still another, until finally the lady snaps at these pointless regressions: “It’s no use, boy—it’s turtles all the way down.“
Just then, the sand beside me begins to move, like time-lapsed sprouts, as the little ones manage to climb, up and up, all the way up.