Dia de Torturuginha (Part Deaux)

So yesterday we had the second annual Dia de Torturuginha in Cruzinha which was the culmination of a years worth of work and diligence, and definitely one of my best days in Cape Verde. Some strong feelings of personal satisfaction, fulfillment and contentment, and a reminder that coming here was the right decision for me.

The day progressed almost exactly as it did last year (if you’re supremely bored, you can go back and see a detailed account of last year’s event), except that it was better organized, there were more kids and more snacks, but most importantly, and due in no small part to the efforts of the local associations and citizens in Cruzinha and Cha de Igreja, myself, Peace Corps and the I.N.D.P., MORE TURTLES!!! Why more turtles you ask?

Well, as I recently posted, we’ve had a tremendous amount of rain over the last couple of months, with severe flooding all across the island. Roads everywhere are underwater, there have been some pretty substantial mud and rock slides, and power in my ribeira has been virtually non-existent. As it turns out, nearly ALL of that rain-run-off wound its way to the bottom of the ribeira (taking the road to Txangreja with it) before winding up at the beach at Boca de Moch, or what I have previously referred to as my “Turtle Beach.” Unfortunately, the natural lay of the land on that beach caused a small lake to form there. Exactly, it turns out, in the spot where the Santo Antao Green Sea Turtles had laid their eggs this summer. Now with all of that in mind, you may recall a post from last month wherein I “unveiled” the Area Protegid de Torturuginha, or turtle egg protection beach fort area, as it is also known. (For those of you unfamiliar with this project, we basically built a little fort for sea turtle eggs and recruited volunteers to monitor the beaches for turtle activity, move newly laid eggs into the fort, and then guard them until they hatch.) Well, long story short, it worked to perfection, and in the process, definitely saved the lives of 146 baby green sea turtles, 42 of which were set loose yesterday.

Hopefully from the pictures below, you’ll be able to see just how well-conceived, well-designed and well-implemented the project was...if I do say so myself. (If you look just beyond the fort and the sign, you’ll see the “lake” that formed on the beach. That’s precisely where we pulled the eggs from.) Without the work of the I.N.D.P., the Associations in Cruzinha and Cha de Igreja, the fort constructers and the various volunteer beach monitors, those eggs certainly would have been drowned and crushed beneath the water.

So let’s, for a moment, consider the statistical success of the project...the real life impact if you will, by assigning to it some “concrete numbers” and ”measurable statistics,” as Peace Corps and all other governmental entities are so fond of doing, and which is definitely part of my job as a Peace Corps volunteer. Thinking conservatively…

146 baby sea turtles. That’s how many have hatched or are still safe inside their eggs inside the turtle fort, and that’ SINCE the rains fell and created the lake on the beach. Green Sea turtles have a 90% mortality rate in the wild, and most won’t survive their first year in the ocean. So let’s say 14.6 make it. That should be rounded down to 14 turtles (maybe there are a few more predators out there this year) that will, potentially, survive to breeding age (15 to 20 years old). Of the 14 adults, lets say half are females. Now we’re down to 7. Let’s say of those 7 adult females, half find another beach somewhere else and don’t return to Boca de Moch to lay their eggs. (I don’t have any reason to suspect that this would happen naturally, I’m just trying to adopt the “conservative estimates” that Peace Corps accounting principles tend to favor. That leaves 3.5 adult, egg-laying, Cape Verdian Green Sea Turtles nesting on Santo Antao. This I’ll actually round up to 4, since we’ve been rounding down this whole time. So that’s 4 that we can sort-of reliably predict to return to the beach at Boca de Moch to lay their eggs sometime around the year 2033. Si Deus Quizer (God willing), I could return to Cap Verde the summer before I turn 58 years old, sleep on the beach at Boca de Moch, and presumably, greet 4 turtles that I had a hand in saving. Thinking exponentially now, let’s say each of those 4 go on to produce 4 more egg laying females. If you accept the premise that those original 4 will survive and continue to return to Boca de Moch each year to lay their eggs, that means that somewhere around the year 2058, when I’m 83 years old, I could come back to Cape Verde, sleep on the beach, and greet 20 turtles that I had a hand in saving. (That’s the 4 from this year’s crop that we set loose in the ocean yesterday, plus their 16 surviving girl children.) 20 turtles in 2 generations. 80 in three generations. 320 in four generations. And so on and so on until, by the time my grandkids are Peace Corps volunteers in Cape Verde, there’ll be a turtle epidemic and we’ll necessarily be back to the days of eating turtle soup, making art from their shells, and home made viagra from their little balls.

Of course I realize that this is wishful thinking and unfortunately, I’m absolute crap at math...and logic...so there may very well be some horrendously grievous errors in my math logic. If you’re coming up with a smaller number, I would interject that in reality, after 2033, when the batch set loose yesterday have reached breeding age, they will potentially be producing 4 more egg producers each YEAR, not each generation, so the possibility exists that my estimates are actually quite low. (Like I said, I’m crap at math and logic, so maybe I’m wrong.) But if you still didn’t agree with me, even after all that, I might argue that the turtle fort, the environmental lessons and beach clean-ups, the meet and greet between the kids and the turtle hatchlings, and the general lesson we’re trying to teach to Cape Verdians about respecting, honoring and cherishing the Santo Antao sea turtles as a valuable natural resource and integral part of their cultural heritage might...just might, go towards saving a few more of the little green bastards each year, and maybe that downward sloping curve which represents the number of sea turtles in the wild, will level out and, eventually, turn the frown upside down. In any event, I feel like we’ve done a good and worthy thing here over the past year, and that makes me feel good.

Enough already...enjoy the pictures!