One of the advantages of having composting loos.

Well before last night other than the environmental reasons, I didn’t think there were that many other advantages to having composting toilets, but now...

For composting loos to work effectively it is best not to wee in them, and it was only because of this that we were both going for a wee on the beach late last night. Melv lead the way, but then came rushing back;
‘There’s something big in the bushes on the beach crest, thrashing round’ he said excitedly.
He grabbed the torch and took a quick –oh my word it was a green turtle – right next to our house, she was digging a nest chamber to lay her eggs right next to where we sit on the beach crest.

Hawksbill turtles frequently use Aride’s beach to lay their eggs at this time of year, with over 60 emergences last year. But green turtles are extremely rare and Aride didn’t have any emergences last year and only 3 the year before. Greens are much bigger than hawksbills, with an average track size of 110cm compared to a hawksbills’ at 75cm. So you can imagine the excitement having one right on the doorstep, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would see a green turtle, especially as they only come out at night, compared to hawksbills which will emerge to nest at any time of day.

We walked round to reach the beach so we could get behind her and not cause any disturbance that is the golden rule, until a turtle has laid stay out of her sight, or they may desert. She was now covering up, busy camouflaging her nest site by moving large amounts of sand and vegetation, hawksbills also do this to disguise where their eggs are, but greens disturb so much ground it looks like a building site.

We sat in the darkness and listened, the noise of the surf made it quite difficult to pick up the noise at times. I strained my eyes to try and see what she was going, we could see sand being flicked up every so often but it was almost impossible to see the turtle herself. I so wanted to put the torch on just to get a glimpse, but I had to wait. It was just amazing to think that there was green turtle, the size of a dinner table, less than 5m away from where I was sitting and yet I couldn’t see her, I had to wait.

Then there was an almighty crash followed by breaking branches and she emerged out of the large sandcastle that she had built, it was now safe to shine the torch just to the side of her for a minute to catch a glimpse of what she was doing – yep she was on her way down to the sea, the nest complete.

The first snatch of what she looked like was amazing, more rounded in shape like a tortoise than the flat appearance of a hawksbill and massive; her front flippers were the power, as she dug them into the sand to drag her body behind.

As her name suggests her shell had a green tinge, Melv kept the light behind her as she made her way down the beach slowly, I put my hand on her shell, quite taken a back at the size of this animal trudging along in front of me. The tide was out and so the beach was long and there was time to take a few photographs, but I was conscious of the bright flash in her eyes.

She was leaving an uneven track behind, with a large indent made for every ‘step’ taken, a look at her rear flippers revealed that one was damaged, with no soft flipper left, just a stump, this explained the unevenness of a track we had seen early in the week – so we knew that this turtle had been up the beach at least before, this was quite common these turtles can lay 3 to 4 nests on the same beach.

Her head protruding out of the large shell and in between the two large front power house flippers, looked small, she lacked the ‘bill’ of the hawksbill, with a rounder face and a deep dark eye. What a privilege to able to stand this close to such an animal. Our time with her was soon to end as she edged closer to the water. She stopped at the water’s edge for a short while to take a rest and let the water lap up against her head and flippers, washing the sand off. You could almost sense the relief and achievement in her as she had successfully managed the huge upheaval of laying her eggs, in a place where her movement was so awkward.

As she entered the surf he movement was transformed and she became graceful once again as the large front flippers took her effortlessly out into the deeper water, soon the round dark lump of her back disappeared. I stood in the dark staring at the surf for a while is disbelief and then glanced at the beautiful clear skies, full of stars twinkling at me - what a magical moment that had been.