Turtle Hatchery

This is the turtle nest hatchery that is located at the Pom Pom Island Resort (yes it is basically a big sandbox....)! A couple of years ago the resort hired a marine biologist to help them set up a conservation project that was to improve the coral reefs off [...]the coasts of their property and the marine biologist also helped them set up a turtle project. The marine biologist has now left and most of the projects they had going on are dormant but they are still working on saving turtles.
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At present PPIR take their guests for a turtle nesting walk every night at 9pm! They walk along the beach and if they see turtles nesting then they take the eggs and bring them to their hatchery where the turtle nests can be left in peace until they hatch [...]approximately 8 weeks after being laid.

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Turtles lay up to 130-150 eggs at one time and these are then burried in the sandbox and marked with a little fence to which the details of the eggs are written! Once the eggs hatch they are left in the sandbox for a couple of hours before being [...]guided down to the water where they can swim off for about 20 years before returning to the beach to lay eggs themselves (if they are females)!
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Since the marine biologist has left the resort it isn't as big a priority to work with the turtles but they are still working with the WWF to protect the turtle populations around the island. THe resort also work to track the turtles and have been gievn permission by [...]the local authorities to fasten tracking devices to the turtles that nest but that is not something that is going on at the moment (when we talked to the resort the other day it seemed like they needed a new biologist to come before anything more is happening)!! While the resort is very passionate about the nests then they unfortunately don't care much about surveying the population which is why our work here at TRACC is very important - we need data on the population size before we can tell whether the conservation of the turtles is successful!! TRACC is working towards working with WWF as well and maybe one day TRACC will be allowed to track turtles :)
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