LEVERA BEACH, Grenada — Friday nights are sacred for me, a time of home-baked challah, a tasty family meal and an opportunity to appreciate the spirituality that descends at this time of the week.
The endangered leatherback turtle deposits her eggs three feet deep in the sand. She then covers her nest and camouflages the hole, which is all she can do to protect the hatchlings she will never see.
[Scott Eanes photo]
I make an exception only for the most exceptional of circumstances, but as my eyes gradually get used to the darkness and I begin to make out the movement of flippers gently thudding on the sand, I feel deep down that this situation qualifies.
I’m on a virtually deserted, remote beach on the Caribbean island of Grenada, listening to the soft snorting sounds of a critically endangered leatherback turtle beneath a starry May night.
With amazement I watch this massive creature prepare a nest three feet into the moist sand. She deftly uses her hind flippers to excavate, shaking each one fastidiously before inserting it deeper into the hole lest she carry excess sand into the egg chamber. Here she will deposit 123 eggs in the next hour, cover them and plod into the pitch black ocean to begin a deep, watery journey of more than 3,000 feet below the surface.
Listen to me: if it should ever come your way, jump at the opportunity to travel the bumpy, stomach-lurching roads that will, two hours later, lead you to Levera Beach on Grenada’s northernmost point. This is the only place in the country where you can watch a leatherback turtle deposit a basketful of eggs into the sand, and trust me on this: the sight will fill you with awe, leave you with deep respect for the turtle and awaken inside you a commitment to its preservation.
In the 20th century, leatherbacks declined in number by 20 per cent – with man their greatest predator. It doesn’t help that although the turtles are prolific egg-layers, the odds of a hatchling’s survival are incredibly slim. The night before, nine turtles clambered up the shore, laying in excess of 1,000 eggs, but only one hatchling is likely to reach adulthood.
This mother turtle must be aware on some level of the low survival rate, for her nest is meticulously crafted and she stops only when she is certain that the moist crevice is free of roots, shells or any other debris that might harm her hatchlings. Perching on the edge she starts to lay eggs and then covers her nest and camouflages the hole, which is all she can do to protect the hatchlings she will never see.
Only when there is no trace of the hole or the eggs she has secretly laid does she begin a slow, clumsy walk back to the ocean.
What she doesn’t know is that as carefully as she constructed her nest, poachers emerge in the daylight, prodding the sand with long thin sticks for evidence of the hole. If they are not spotted and reported, they can easily ruin the night’s labours by finding the newly formed nests, unearthing their contents and selling the eggs on the black market.
Ocean Spirits, a non-profit organization that aims to protect the leatherback turtle and its second-largest Caribbean nesting site on this remote Grenada beach, is trying to prevent that from happening. According to our tour co-ordinator Dora Cornwall, poaching has been reduced by 70 per cent since the organization started patrolling the beach at night and educating the locals.
But the challenges are far from over. A wealthy Brit has shown a keen interest in constructing a hotel on the verge of Levera Beach, and if he gets his way, the turtles may find their nesting grounds encroached by couples walking in the moonlight, their silence disturbed by the jingles of hotel music and their orientation confused by the bright lights that such a development will inevitably bring.
For this evening, though, their 700-metre stretch of conch-strewn sand is enveloped in the gentle black of night and peaceful but for the sound of the crashing surf. Across the bay a lone light shines from Sugarloaf Island, an uninhabited isle that rises like a perfect triangle from the ocean. And buried a few feet beneath the sand’s surface, thousands of embryonic turtles are nestled into a sealed cocoon, awaiting just the right moment when they will hatch from their eggs, co-operatively dig their way to the surface and begin their epic ocean journey.
If you go:
• Kennedy Tours offers turtle-watching tours on Levera Beach for $65 per person. www.kennedytours.com, 473-444-1074
• For more information, contact the Grenada Board of Tourism at www.grenadagrenadines.com or by calling 416-595-1339.