Moving into the 2nd week of volunteering work, I'm amazed by this thing called human adaptation. I'm slowly getting used to those house full of spiders, this cray weather, and the unearthly working shifts. Don't know if Digna's (my host mom) cooking skills improved, or she bought more groceries? Anyway, meals are getting more yumz and filling.
Back to work this morning 9am at the hatchery. Breakfast this morning was a little unsual with chilli paste fried rice and a little egg in there. With plantains as usual. It was surprisingly good even though I don't have the habit of having rice for breakfast. I still haven't had my toast in this house yet!!
Shift started at 9am it was freaking hot but bearable because both Zoe and I only stayed at the hatchery till 9.45am before walking back to the station for activity. It was a discussion led by Jacqui as she is doing this volunteer trip for academic credits.
It was a discussion about the pros and cons of this village harvesting turtle eggs. Yea you saw that. Turtle eggs are consumed by people and are sold in markets. Apparently they are really delicious and good for the men. Just because mating sea turtles "spoon" for 4 days doesn't mean that the male turtle had his game on for 4 days. Lol. The conclusion is that eggs harvesting is not sustainable for the community of Ostional and for the sea turtles. The turtles are endangered species already and the people are still taking away eggs. Even though they claimed to only harvest 1% of the eggs during this period called arribada, when all the turtles come onshore altogether to lay eggs. But who can really vouch to that 1%? There's no regulatory body anywhere.
But being in the environment of commercialisation, I am not entirely against the idea of harvesting eggs because it creates jobs for the community, brings income back and they have the resources to reinvest in conserving the sea turtle so as to be able to harvest the eggs without harm to the species. I don't think this is a bullshit excuse. Just because there's no regulations, harvesters tend to be harvesting more than they should because well... who doesn't like profits? Some form of control should be put in place.. however, we are back to the point of not having enough resources to start a group of people who can control and regulate their activities. This group of people can't be just anyone cos then the locals won't be very happy. What do other people know about their community and what rights have these people got to gain control over their "culture"?
And this is why this has been a constant problem and debate.
Ok, enough of the serious issues.
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Lunch was so oily with rice, plantains (yea what's new right), and a new dish made of tuna and something similar to sweet potato. Everything was compact and deep fried into something like croquette. Fresca was guanabana which I figured was soursop.
Read my second book titled "The Timekeeper" by Mitch Albom. Took a short nap before waking up for a shower and dinner. Dinz was the usual tortilla and cheese, which tasted yumz surprisingly. Lol, I think I'm adapting well. The first time when I was served that for dinner it was really a joke. I was so speechless but super hungry so I just ate anyway.
First 6 hours night shift at the hatchery. It was really hard to read because I have to use my red light. And it wasn't too bright after a while because the batt is running low.
Guess what?
I spotted babies again!!
This time round they're the black turtles !! It was dark so really hard to see with only red lights. At first, it kind of looked like poop in the cannister. Well, same thing like I discovered the leatherback babies, the black baby wasn't entirely out of the sand yet. I could only see the top of its head.
I was with Tasha. And lucky her! Every time when the babies popped, she's on hatchery shift.
Same thing goes on... Collecting the wet sand and transferring the babies into the bucket of wet sand and counting them. 56 of them!!!!!!
We took a sample of 15 babies and measured their carapace (length and width of the shell) and weight.
It was really exciting and that made the shift a little better. 6 hours really too long man. And I can't really pee in the bushes so I didn't per for almost 7hours!!! Even though I ended my shift at 12mn, we release the babies at that time too. Some more it was delayed because we were waiting for some latecomers.
These blacks were so much faster than the leatherbacks! Even thought we have so many of them, they got into the sea really quickly and the high tide helped too.
Tash and I got home at about 1 plus and after washing up I went to bed at about 1.20am.
Good night! That's probably the last nest that's gonna hatch while we are still working here. So hatchery shifts gonna be really pointless and mundane now. even for patrol if we spot any turtles coming onshore to lay eggs, we won't be "catching" their eggs and putting them into the hatchery because then, they won't have the manpower to look after the hatchery 24/7. After all, we are the last batch of ISV group for this summer. Still holding on to a tinge of hope to see an adult leatherback. I'm really lucky to see all the babies. And out of the 3 batches, I spotted 2 of them. Which is so damn cool, at least that's what I think. but nobody gives a damn lol.
Like the first batch of lestherback babies I spotted at the end of my shift, I quickly passed the duties to Tash and Grace and went home for shower and dinz so as to come back to release them on time.
When I was back at the hatchery, it was so crowded and there was this one girl who asked me if I'm on hatchery shift or just there to see the babies. lol hello I saw them when they first came out?! It's not like I went into the overcrowded hatchery and made a chaos. Ok, I went in for a while and realised the hatchery was too crowded and so I waited outside the hatchery. I was just there to see them go back to the sea safely!!!
It's kinda pointless now for hatchery shifts. But idk why I'm so lucky I have another 3pm-6pm hatchery tomorrow. Also in the morning 6am-9am AND 6pm-12mn on Saturday.
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