Geography Lesson: Turtle Beach is not just a clever name. Its a refuge for sea turtles to rest on the sand and lay in the sun by day. There is a natural reef further out in this particular location which allows the turtles to feed and play in water just off the beach. Tiger Sharks are their primary predator. This reef is shallow enough where if keeps the Tiger Sharks at bay (ha...Tiger Sharks at bay...yes I do crack myself up), but deep enough where the turtles can maneuver. So they can be in this location and be relatively safe. We were told that Turtle Beach is one of only three locations in the world where they are known to consistently visit the same location in order to sun themselves. They will go onto other beaches but very inconsistently and they don't spend the day there to sun themselves like they do at Turtle Beach and the other two beaches (the other two beaches are in Fiji and the Philippines).
Green Sea Turtle (aka: Honu): Green Sea Turtles are cold blooded, travel in Pods, and live up to 80 years of life (not to be confused with tortoises that can be hundreds of years old). They were placed on the Endangered Species List in July of 1978, but since have been upgraded to the Threatened Species List. Only the bigger adult turtles come up on shore at Turtle Beach and they tend to be 20+ years old and about 140+ lbs. The largest Green Sea Turtle that visits Hawaii is approximately 260 lbs (the closer turtle in the video is this turtle actually). You can often see other turtles poking their heads out of the water about 20-30 yards out. Those turtles tend to be smaller (less than 20 years old and smaller in size). They stay close to the beach until the their pod 'leaders' come back in the water.
Volunteers: Volunteers staff this beach during every daylight hour to protect the turtles. Volunteers and scientist have been tracking the turtles here since 1999 when they started to show preference to this location. Many of the turtles are GPS chipped, but the volunteers easily recognize the turtles by their size, gender and individual markings. When a turtle comes onto the beach the volunteers make haste to set up a roped off perimeter to keep people away (about 6 feet) so that the turtle can do what it intended: rest! I doubt they come to the beach to be annoyed and touched by all of humanity anyway. The volunteers place out cards on each turtle which has things like their name, Hawaiian name, approximate weight, gender and other interesting science facts (for example: one turtle, according to GPS makes a round trip to lay eggs each year of 1000 miles, another has an impressive 135m dive recorded).
Disclaimer: All of the above information was told to us by official volunteers of Turtle Beach. Dave and I do not claim in any way to be Green Sea Turtle Experts. They are beautiful creatures! And I was impressed with how Oakley (the far turtle in the video) just climbed up an over a big rock in his way.
A special shout out to my Granny. She turns 95 tomorrow! I understand that she has learned how to use my aunt's iPhone in order to read my blog. Way to be techy Granny! Have a great birthday and may your 95th birthday be everything you dreamed it would be. I'm sad I will miss the big party, but I'll be thinking about you. Miss you, love you and party hard!
