Chagar Hutang Beach at Redang Island
A mission on a beautiful beach.
Simple quarters and gallery are built.
We were counting stars at mid night while waiting for the landing of sea turtles.
Sea turtles like to lay eggs at mid night with minimum disturb.
The egg is as big as table tennis.
We got to remove the all the eggs if the laying location is not safe such as having roots and red ants.
We were lucky enough as there was a mother sea turtle landed in the early morning. So, we could witness the whold process of laying eggs clearly.
She always took a big breath when laying eggs.
We got to measure the size of sea turtle when she had finished laying eggs.
We then took a photo with her before she covered the nest.
She covered the nest with her strong flippers.
Bye! The tired mother went back into the sea after long hours of laying eggs process. It could be 2 hours.
Other than night duty, we got to do day time patrol under the hot sun as well.
Straw hat could block a little bit of hot sun. haha!
We got to write down the nest data including nest number, turtle tag number and laying date on the wooden sticks to identify the different nests.
Sometimes, I signed my name as well. Hehe!
Measuring the distance between nest and plants or trees.
Monitor lizard is one of the natural predators of sea turtles. We got to get them out of nest area during day time patrol.
If the nest is attacked by lizard, ants or crab, we got to replace the nest at safer location with netlon mesh protection.
Some time after the date of laying eggs, we got to check the maturity of the eggs.
This nest was matured. Probably the baby sea turtles would go back to their home (sea) at night.
We prayed hard that the baby shark would not attack the baby sea turtles.
Sometime, the baby sea turtles will be taken for research or education purpose before releasing them into the sea.
The Chagar Hutang Beach is really a beautiful place.
We could be very relaxing by reading book or napping under the trees.
What was she playing with?
She was playing with hermit crab. So cute!
How about these guys?
Oh my god! They were enjoying prawn spa!
We went for jungle trekking.
Rock climbing? haha! It is too beautiful.
Funny group memebers.
We made a letter/message box (Penyu Box) as a souvenir to SEATRU.
Thank you SEATRU! Your contribution to the sea turtles as well as the earth is very much appreciated and recognised.
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