Turtles... again...

You know how turtles are one of only three animals with a crystal lodged in their brains so they always know east from west? And how they're so smart they return to the beach they were born on thirty years later, despite only having seen it for a few moonlit minutes in the dash for the sea? And how the clever little babies just know to head for the moon when they hatch because it'll lead them to the ocean? Don't believe all the hype.

We arrived on Selingan Island mid-morning, and after the usual talk from the tour guide, decided to head for the beach. Shortly thereafter, squeals of delight were heard from atop the dune, where we, too, soon saw tiny blue heads poking up out of sand, as an army of baby turtles came charging towards the sea. Even the existence of an arrogant Aussie man who persisted in holding his camera 5cm from their noses and walking backwards to get his shot, did little to lessen the sheer delight I felt in seeing this for the first time (seeing them released from a hatchery is simply not the same.) 

Soon the army thinned and then stopped entirely as the last, awkward, little tanks reached the water and transformed into graceful sea creatures, raising their heads now and then to get their bearings. We all knew that we might have increased the survival rate by as much as ten-fold simply by being around, keeping predators at a distance - one case in which I believe (and I'm sure there are many who disagree) human intervention is okay - in a way, it's just making up for the negative intervention: plastic bags in the ocean, polluted waters, brightly-lit island resorts... (and on, and on, and on...)

But the true test hadn't yet arrived. I walked to the back edge of the beach to see if I could spot the now empty nest. From the dune forest I heard the sudden grunt and rustle of a monitor lizard, and as my eyes adjusted to the relative gloom, I realised that half the babies were still stuck in the forest, blindly flapping away from the short, and being picked off by a huge monitor lizard and his small minions... What to do? Baby turtles are endangered, monitor lizards are not. A fellow visitor said she'd been told, "If you have to touch them to save them, do it." Basically you can leave them to die in the forest, or you can at least give them a fighting chance in the sea. So in we charged, hauling out soft little bodies from the leaf debris and entangled roots, and passing them out like a bucket chain to the sand. I told the lizard to back off, and he did, though I admit it may have been the wild eyes and waving arms rather than any true sense of conscience. An Italian angrily told me to let nature take its course, but I explained they were dying in the forest, and another guest explained that we were carrying out the instructions of the rangers, of course a much more knowledgeable source than a holidaymaker, and he quietened down. He was wearing Speedos, anyway, and it's hard to take a middle-aged man in Speedos seriously.

When we'd helped all the babies we could find, and the forest floor was free of all rustlings but the ones of a pissed-off monitor lizard, and we were back on the beach, the guilt kicked in. Apart from ill-fated rescues of baby birds as a kid, this was the first time I've ever intentionally interfered in nature and touched a wild animal. Although I hate cruelty, I'm not all that sentimental about animals, and recognise the fact that all animals need to eat, even the nasty ugly ones with lots of teeth... If turtles weren't so endangered and monitor lizards so not, I wouldn't have done what I did. 

A week later, I got to talk to a marine biologist, though, and she told me I'd done absolutely the right thing.

So there.

Turtle soup and other No-Nos

We left from the jetty at Sandakan in high spirits, ready for the 45-minute journey across the Sulu Sea to Turtle Island National Park. Past the super-modern angular mosque and the pretty water village; past a Philippine cargo ship and low houseboats waving laundry like shapely flags. The headland disappeared behind us, while upfront darkness loomed - perhaps you might not have felt its looming, but as someone who feels queasy on a bridge, it loomed. Soon the rain came, spattering the water into texture, forcing the boatman to lower the canvas sides. We sat in darkness, noisy darkness, the sound of the engine filling the small space. Looking out the back, just grey sea, grey sky, and in true Sabah style our lime-green boat.

After 45 minutes, solid land started appearing again - little grey islands, dressed in grey trees and beige slices of beach. And then the air cleared a little, and the grey sea turned to bright turquoise, the coral causing dark hiccups as we slowed, and stopped, right on the beach. Someone leant a wooden stepladder against the bow and we all stepped prettily down onto the sand. Well, mostly.

Turtle Islands Park is made up of three small islands (yes, really) on which there are turtle sanctuaries (honest) and which have collectively been a national park for nearly 35 years. It lies right on the border, so that the next island you can see from the beach is Philippine. Southern Philippines. Where they still eat turtle soup, and munch on turtle eggs for breakfast. It hasn't been an altogether easy ride for Sabahan environmentalists... Pulau Selingaan, the only island with tourist access, is visited by 15 to 20 Green and Hawksbill turtles every night of the year. As we walked up the beach ot the cabins, we crossed over their curious tracks - like the tracks of a small tractor that's dragging a body behind it, say - and (repeatedly) fell into the cavernous holes that used to be nests. The reason these are holes and not nests is, of course, entirely eco-friendly: a team of rangers waits up every night, stealing the eggs as they drop from the mother turtles, and carefully reburying them in a safe hatchery, then, two months later, releasing the newborns back into the moonlit sea. It's all a terribly romantic job and reignites my 8-year-old self's desire to be a marine biologist.

One side effect of this protection is that the beach is wonderful, and only inhabited by the twenty tourists staying on the island, while the snorkelling is amazing - just a metre or so off the beach, you better pick up your feet, because otherwise a multi-hued parrotfish or a bright blue starfish is going to get you. Or, arg, one of the millions of very healthy-looking sea slugs. Really. It took me about an hour to persuade my sister to go any further than the end of the sand.

Apart from dodging the vicious little beasts, I spent the late afternoon sitting and watching herons hunt amongst the rockpools, and raucous kingfishers swoop in on unsuspecting prawns in the shallows. It's well worth a visit, even if turtles don't rock your boat. Which they do. Obviously.

So at night, after dinner and a well-made video that roundly castigates the Philippines for being such turtle-murdering meanies, we sit and wait. It's very dark outside the main building, so as not to put off the turtles, but we can see the torches of the rangers going back and forth until one cries out "Turtle!" We all grab our cameras and hurry down to where he crouches with a bucket, grabbing each soft, round egg as it falls from a 1.5 metre Green Turtle, a beautiful creature who's in a birthing trance and isn't in the slightest disturbed by the fifteen tourists oohing and aahing over this encounter with a real-life dinosaur.

The ranger watches her carefully, and as soon as she's rested he shoos us off the beach. We see a couple of other turtles in the moonlight, but only one is allowed to be disturbed each night so we let them be. Up to the hatchery where we watch the 79 eggs being re-buried in a lizard-proof hole, carefully labelled with the date, species, number of eggs, and number of clutch since January 1st - 869 clutches have been stolen and coddled so far this year. Our pleasure is somewhat reduced when the ranger tells us less than 1% of these turtles might actually reach adulthood. But it's a start.

Finally it's back down to an empty stretch of beach to watch a bucketful of babies ("...and here's one I prepared earlier!") being returned to the ocean. Almost all of them waddle frantically straight for the torchlight being shone on the water, but three head for us and I'm permitted to gently turn one around and set him off in the right direction. He's soft and grey and his flippers smack my fingers, and I just know that he's going to be one of the 1%.