The Turtle Walk!!!

Friday night, we decided to go for turtle walk. Turtle walk is an event which is organized by the aquatic department for the conservation of turtle eggs. Basically it’s a three months drive in which they cover a certain distance of beach in whole night and try finding the nest of a turtle, if there’s egg in those nests then they make sure those eggs are kept safely in the hatchery. The drive was good and so was the walk. Although it was damn tiring, we covered almost the distance of 10 km that night. Initially I thought it won’t be that tiring as I am habituated to walk. But I forgot that there is a huge difference in walking on road when compared to walking on sand. We reached the spot at around 11pm at night. The drive kicked off after half an hour. There were many others also apart from our college group, so they divided us into two groups and assigned few scouts with both the groups. The drive started with the introduction of the turtle walk, the reason behind it and what we are gonna do tonight. It was very informative I must say, I was not aware of many such things about turtles. I didn’t know the fact that each turtle lays around 50-180 eggs and out of which the ratio of turtles surviving is negligible. Out of almost 1000 turtles which are born the probability of surviving till their adulthood is only 1 out of 1000. I was shocked, I asked my friends about it. And then they told me that as soon as turtles come out of their egg all they want to do is jump into the sea. They are very desperate to move into the sea. When the female turtle comes to the beach and lays egg, she goes back to the ocean without giving a thought about those eggs future. They are born to become independent. So they don’t need any guidance, they don’t need anyone else. As soon as they come out from their nest they jump into the ocean and most of them are dead then and there. Because they are too small, they are often eaten by the dogs, crabs, fishes and humans. 

According to the law of nature, turtles are born to balance the food chain for many other creatures. There are some kinds of fishes who live on turtles. And many other creatures. I was shocked to know all this, just imagine that you are born to be eaten by someone. I had a series of doubts, that we know they will die as soon as they come out of from their egg then why can’t we keep them in a protected area and when they are grown up we can leave them into the sea. And the answer to this question was, they are born to become independent. They know how to deal with their life and so if we interfere in that then they will lose their will power and become dependent. I had just one thought after that, what a creature!!!

The main reason why turtles are also on the verge of getting extinct is Poaching and overfishing. These are major issues that we should discourage. What actually happens in overfishing is, the machine catches those fishes also which are not use for trading, so if that machine have those kinds of fishes then they are thrown after a while into the sea. Till that time they are dead. And sometimes even turtles become the victim of that machine and eventually even they die. We can use the traditional form of fishing here, because fishermen knows what they are supposed to catch and not. But the machine won’t know anything about it.

The main thing is we have come too far and now we can’t go back. Our resources are degrading day by day; many creatures are getting extinct which will directly affect the food chain in turn unbalancing the law of nature. And when the law of nature is not satisfied then that day the earth will wipe us out. I believe in a theory behind when and how the world will come to an end. When we will reach that point where earth will have nothing to offer us in terms of resources and when we will break the law of nature then that day the earth will wipe us out forever. Like how dinosaurs became the victim of extinction. Same way we will be passing through that phase someday. Everything in this world is so balanced that they have cure for everything. One civilization goes and after several years a new one always starts. So someday this world which was created by nature but destroyed by humans will come to an end and after another hundreds of years later a new one will start. That’s the theory I believe in. But it’s not possible for us to attain equilibrium now. We have destroyed so much here that whatever we do in the name of conservation, it won’t help at all. It will just give us few more years to live on.

So after the discussion we started walking. It seemed exciting in the beginning but then after a while it started taking a toll on every one of us. But we kept on walking, enjoying the sea breeze and walking along the sea shore with a bunch of people. We saw many crabs, dead fishes, snakes on our way to find the turtle nest. And after walking for almost 10 km finally we found one such nest which had like 82 fresh eggs. The scout told us that those eggs were laid just one hour ago. We checked the eggs, the nest kept the eggs safely in cotton bag and went to the hatchery where they are kept safely. When the walk was over I checked my watch, it was 4:45am. We started walking at around 1:30am. We were tired but the experience was somewhat different and new. We have never walked so much; we saw many new things which exist in this world. We came across many different feelings after spotting so many dead fishes along the shore. Overall it was one nice experience; we sat there for a while and then decided to see the sunrise before heading home. And that scene was magical; all you could see is sun popping up from the sea as if it’s coming out from the sea actually. It seemed nice and fresh and when we were leaving we realized how much our body was aching and all we needed was a nice sound sleep.