It has been three days since Tambo has seen a mother turtle on the beach at night laying her eggs. These days they are the olive ridley’s, measuring perhaps 75 to 100 centimeters in length. The much larger leatherbacks have been few this year, according to Tambo, but the olives have laid many eggs.
Tambo is one of two task forces, as he puts it, though each “force” comprises but one person, employed from the local community and deployed by the owners of the Beyin Beach Resort, Nina and Patrick, to hunt for sea turtles and their eggs. Nina is British. Patrick is Ghanaian, raised in the UK and recently returned home with Nina to build their resort and to protect turtles.
Tambo patrols the beach to the east of the hotel, while a colleague of his patrols the west. Each task force departs around 11pm and walks some 4 kilometers. If signs of a turtle are spotted, this is noted, and the task forces inspect the area for eggs. If any eggs are found, these are carefully collected and returned to the hotel’s hatchery.
It perchance they should spot a turtle in the process of actually laying eggs, the task forces stand watch to assure no one disturbs the turtle. Tambo explained that when the turtle is laying, she falls into a trance. Boys from the village might catch her and carry her off for the next day’s meal, though technically under Ghana law, catching and eating sea turtles is illegal. Tambo makes sure that doesn’t happen. Once the mother turtle is safely back in the sea after depositing and burying its eggs, the task force collects those eggs and returns them to the hatchery.
“You see,” says Tambo, “we the fishermen of this community really do need these turtles. This is because the turtles eat the jellyfish. We the human beings do not eat the jellyfish. The jellyfish consume the small fishes of the sea, and these small fishes never have the chance to become large. That is why our fishermen are not catching any big fish now. And so it is very important to protect the turtles. We bring the eggs here, and then we help the baby turtles, once they are hatched, to find their way to the sea without anyone bothering them.”
Tambo’s collected eggs are buried in a shallow hole in the sand to one side of the beach of the hotel, just above a low shelf in the sand that marks high tide. A wooden box, measuring perhaps 50 centimeters square, and open on both the bottom and the top, is placed above the burial site, somewhat like a corral. The top of the box is covered with a light screen to allow air and sun to reach the sand, but keeps out birds that might dig for and eat the eggs. The bottom is of course open so that the turtles can surface from below after hatching, though that also leaves the bottom open to predatory crabs – not a big problem, says Tambo, though sometimes the crabs do drag one or two of the babies down into the crab holes for their supper.
There are perhaps 15 of these boxes at the hotel, arrayed in a neat line on the ridge, easily visible but still some distance away from the hammocks and beach umbrellas used by the hotel’s guests.
On this particular night, I fell asleep reading a novel around 9pm, and woke to the early calls of birds in the predawn of 5am. Out my bedroom veranda, through the thin, gently swaying muslin across the doors I’d left open through the night, the phosphorescence of the ocean surf sparkled and shimmered a hundred meters down the slight embankment through the coconut grove. I grabbed a flashlight and headed in that direction, but managed to make it to the beach without turning it on and without stumbling, the faint glow on the horizon being sufficient to keep me from bumping into trees.
As the sky brightened further, I peered into each small turtle hatching box. The first ten were empty, but inside the eleventh were perhaps 100 tiny turtles, milling about, climbing on top of each other, perhaps hearing the call of the sea yet unable to find their way out of the corral. I imagined them crying out to their mother, though she had long departed, and of course, these turtles said nothing that I could hear.
Down the beach a bit, popping out in the momentary lulls between tumbling waves, was the sound of a fisherman’s chant. “Ay yah ay yah,” then a pause and slightly louder, “Ay yah ay yah.” Emerging from the darkness were a half dozen young men hauling, inches at a time, on a thick line that disappeared into the sea. Unseen beneath the waves, a net stretched from surface to bottom for perhaps 500 meters, tracing a great arc back to the shore. The chanting men would pull a few inches, then shuffle a bit closer to the turtle hatchery, gradually tightening the net’s arc to collect the morning’s catch.
Through the coconut grove two flashlights bobbed low to the ground, attached to unseen children’s voices. Nina and her two boys had heard from Tambo that many eggs had hatched in the night, and they were coming to inspect, with Patrick not far behind.
First they removed the box and inverted it. As the tiny turtles began flopping instinctively toward the surf, Nina, Patrick, and the boys quickly but gently scooped them up, counting them as they were deposited in the now upside down hatching box. “110,” proclaimed Nina.
Patrick eyed the approaching fishermen and their net. “We’d better carry these over to the outside of the net,” he declared. “No sense our releasing them here only to have them end up entangled.”
“Is the mesh in the net small enough to catch baby turtles,” I asked, thinking that it might be unusual for fishing of this type to be done with a small-mesh net.
“Yes, it’s illegal, and a waste really,” Patrick replied, “but there’s no enforcement. They end up leaving most of the small fish on the beach, actually, which is quite a waste.”
“They don’t realize they’re depleting their own stock,” Nina joined in. “It’s quite a shame. I’ve gathered up some of those wasted small fish myself, and they cook up quite nicely. If they’re going to catch them, they really ought to eat them.”
“Do you really think that artisanal fishing like this can have a real impact on fish stocks,” I asked. “Don’t you think the real problem with overfishing is those industrial trawlers you can sometimes see out there on the horizon?”
Nina looked out to sea. “It’s hard to say,” she answered after a moment. “I wonder if nets like these, dragging on the bottom, destroy the places where fish eggs are laid. We do sometimes see enormous quantities of coral and rock washing up on the beach, but perhaps that’s the damage done by those bigger trawlers.”
Patrick walked the turtle box to the other side of the fishermen’s net. One of the other tourists staying at the hotel lagged behind a bit, and then took a flash picture that included both Patrick and the fishermen, to which the lead fisherman chanter shouted an objection. As I crossed under their line, greeting them, the chanter also called out to me, “Please white man, give me one cedi.”
I smiled. “You give me one big fish and I’ll give you one cedi.”
All the fishermen laughed in reply. “Ok, ok, when the fish comes, I will call you,” replied the chanter.
“Big one,” I held my hands wide apart to show them.
“Yes, yes, we are coming,” was their unison response. With renewed vigor, they hauled further on their line.
Patrick, trailed by Nina, the other tourist, and the two small boys, had moved another 50 meters down the beach, and I caught up with them just in time for the turtle box to be turned gently over, tumbling all 110 freshly counted turtles onto the sand. As the first rays of the sun peeked over the horizon, they “dashed” (turtle style, more like floundered) toward the sea. They seemed to have no trouble discerning which direction to take. Some moved remarkably quickly. Others looked a bit tired.
The surf caught the lead turtles, tumbling them back upon their siblings. They quickly righted themselves and resumed the race. We snapped more pictures, then a big wave came, and they were gone.
