Turtle watching sunset tour at Thevenard

Published date Sunday, 06 November 2011 13:01

You may recall us mentioning in our September blog that the turtles here on Thevenard Island had started to arrive for the mating season. We are pleased to announce that mating season is in full swing here on Thevenard Island. Turtles are in abundance with up to 50 + being sighted on parts of the beach here on Thevenard and surrounding Islands such as Bessiere’s Islands (also known as Anchor Island) and Long Island guests have been sighting plenty of turtle action in the water as well as on the beaches.

On Saturday we took a small group of guests on our back beach sunset tour. For me personally this was my first sunset back beach tour so I was very excited and hoping for interesting sights.

On our drive to the back beach one of the guests that had done the 11km nature trail walk earlier that day was explaining to us that she had seen a stranded turtle on its back that she had spent an hour trying to help by rolling it over but as the turtle was so big she was unsuccessful. We feared the worst for the turtle as the guests had explained that the flies were gathering and the turtle seemed very weak. The guest was fairly sure we were not heading in the same direction, where she had seen the turtle over 4 hours prior to the tour.

To everyone’s delight, especially the 2 children who joined us, on our arrival down to the beach we saw the stranded Green Turtle very tired but still alive upside down on the beach. The two other guests and I assisted the green turtle back onto all fours and it started to slowly make its way to the seas edge then back out to the shallow waters where it moved slowly back out to sea. I must say we were all very happy to have saved such a beautiful creature and what a great experience for us all especially the children. Being my first sunset tour of the back beach I was just as excited as everyone else to have had such an experience.

Whilst strolling and beach combing along the beach looking at all of the creatures and the different types of shells, we came across more turtles making their way up the beach to lay eggs. There were two species, the Green Turtle and the Loggerhead Turtle. There are many nests and tracks already along the beach. We look forward to the young ones hatching around Christmas time.