So Perfect the Night

The mother loggerhead heaved her massive body on to the white sand beach during a coastal thunderstorm and laid a nest of 119 eggs in her perfectly dug pit. After being satellite tagged “Storm” crawled back to sea, leaving her babies to incubate in the summer heat.

Fifty-seven days later, during a ferocious lightning storm, 87 hatchlings crawled to the salty water of the Gulf and began their lifetime of ocean living. Two more siblings made their appearance later that night.

The next night five more babies crawled out of the nest amid island visitors ooohhh’s and ahhh’s and questions about sea turtles and sharks and sand and practices adopted to assist the turtles. Another emerged later cheered on by children and adults alike. And while it’s wonderful that people take an interest in hatchlings and sea turtles (and anything unrelated to television, video games and other human-created distractions), sometimes it is stressful for those of us charged with keeping the turtles safe as they journey from nest to sea. What is the fine balance between allowing up close and personal viewing and danger for loggerhead hatchlings–a species protected by the Endangered Species Act?

The following night arrived and a few people were still inquiring about the status of additional hatchlings. We heard noise when we listened with the stethoscope but it sounded like the turtles were not progressing past a certain point in their crawl up and out. Tourists lost interest and wandered home. Children were called inside by family and finally the beach got quiet.

The orange moon began to peak above the condos far to the east. Three of us ‘green shirts’ remained, softly sharing stories of animals and the intimate connection women develop with the Earth and four-leggeds, winged-ones, finned-ones and creepy crawlers. The instinctual knowing we have because of our own child birth experiences and the understanding we share with the Earth as she labors with these little hatchlings, draws us closer to each other and to the turtles in the process of being birthed from the womb of the planet.

Stars lit up the sky as they hung close to us, three women sitting with this labor, this unfolding of life. The soft murmer of our voices sprinkled with joyful notes of laughter wove a web of safety as three more hatchlings slowly emerged from their confinement of hard, wet sand. Quietly we crawled beside them allowing them to find their way to the water, encouraging them with low notes of song or words of encouragement until they found their way to the rolling breakers that welcomed them in watery embrace.

Some argue that the method we use to assist the hatchlings is unnatural–using a trench, redirecting them when they head toward artificial light sources. However, the only way to re-create a natural sea turtle’s hatching experience is to return the beach to a natural state….a complete blackout of all lights on the beach and/or removing all buildings and tourists. Extreme? Of course, so we hold up towels or block light these babies are naturally attracted to, otherwise they crawl directly to the light. In the case of this particular nest, every baby made a bee-line due east once they reach the hard-packed sand…directly to the brightly-lit sky of the ‘condo run’ in Gulf Shores. Or like last night, to the house that had an inside light on that was illuminating the sand above the nest.

If humans created the dangers for sea turtle hatchlings, then humans must be responsible for making this right in some way. It is the only moral thing to do. Even if it involves hours of sitting on dark beaches waiting…..waiting….waiting. And for many of us, the willingness to correct mistakes made by humans to help such a vulnerable species knows no bounds.

The natural beach is long gone in Gulf Shores but it is still a place where humans can try to undo harm done to marine species such as sea turtles by giving them safe passage back to their ocean home. In the process we are transformed, we become attuned once again to the cycles of nature–the coming and going of tides, the patterns of stars, weather. In the truest sense, we are healed through our efforts to help sea turtles. With each hour spent, with every turtle that makes it to the water, we right a wrong done when the beaches were leveled and condos raised.