Return of the Loggerheads
The new discovery of a loggerhead turtle nest is cause for celebration throughout Bermuda.

By Jennifer Gray

The discovery of turtle tracks on a Bermuda beach last summer came as a complete surprise. With great excitement, naturalists photographed and documented the prints, which suggested a visit by a loggerhead turtle. Further investigations revealed eggs under the sand. Then we had to patiently wait out the 60-day incubation period.

Bermuda long has offered a welcome mat to turtles, which were plentiful here before settlers exterminated them. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, local conservationists flew in thousands of green turtle eggs from Suriname and Costa Rica and buried them on island beaches.

Knowing that sea turtles return to the beaches where they were born to lay their eggs, we hoped that the imported eggs would hatch, imprint in our sand and return some 40 or more years later to lay their own eggs. We've been waiting ever since. Although the odds that our "recolonisation" efforts will be successful are not the best, we are still hopeful that one day we'll see green turtles again

Green turtles nest abundantly. But loggerhead turtle nests are rare indeed. It was not until 1990 that we first found a clutch of loggerhead eggs in a nest that was washed out by storm surge on Clearwater Beach. Remarkably, that nest was at a site close to where we found the latest in 2005.

As the due date approached, we worried that hatchlings might be wolfed down by yellow-crown night herons and ghost crabs, so we set up a fence and initiated nest checks every four hours around the clock. Then Hurricane Harvey began skulking toward Bermuda. The Bermuda Weather Service predicted a storm surge as much as two feet above high tide. Such a surge would surely cover the nest, so we decided to dig up the eggs and incubate them for the rest of their term in a cooler full of beach sand. Carefully we removed an astonishing 150 eggs and repacked them in a Styrofoam chest. The waiting game continued.

Fifteen days after the due date, the miracle occurred to our great delight. Having pipped their way out of their leathery shells, the tiny sea turtles emerged from the sand in the cooler. In the wee hours of the night we took the hatchlings to their original beach-nesting site to set them free.

Once through the old NASA gate, we entered a wilderness of sprawling trees, tall grasses and an array of native and invasive plants. The badly broken road that winds along the peninsula, flanked by abandoned buildings, made me think that I had entered a time warp. Moonlight met me over the brow of a hill. The stars were so bright I believed I might be able to reach out and touch them. The sea sparkled like a meadow of diamonds. It was on this magnificent August night that we headed to Well Bay Beach to release our baby turtles.

We found the spot where the mother turtle had laid her eggs many weeks before. Members of our group formed a protective "V" from the nest site to the water's edge as we lifted the lid on the small barrel and gave our hatchlings their first glimpse of the splendid night sky. For turtles, the position of the stars and moon seems to be a critical factor in their ability to find their way home years later to reproduce.

After a brief moment of frenzy, the endearing, vulnerable baby turtles began their march to the sea. Looking remarkably like wind-up toys, they scurried along with determination. Some toppled over along the way, but managed to right themselves and persevere.

At the water's edge the turtles seemed to hesitate for just a second. Then the hatchlings were sucked into the sea by a crashing wave and instinctively employed the grace and agility of natural-born swimmers. One by one, they disappeared into the night, swimming at right angles to the waves so that they would be transported far into the Atlantic. After 48 hours or so of non-stop swimming, they might be lucky enough to find food and shelter in rafts of Sargassum weed.

In all, 91 hatchlings were released under the protection of a handful of excited well-wishers. Because loggerheads mature faster than green turtles, we hope to see survivors of our clutch return to lay their own eggs some 25 years from now.

We can speculate all we want as to how and why these rare nesting events occurred, but the bottom line is that we have reason to rejoice in the return of sea turtles to Bermuda's shores after an absence of nearly seven decades. For those of us fortunate enough to witness it, the miracle that occurred on that magnificent August night in 2005 was an unforgettable experience.

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