Scott Benson, from Jamursba-Medi, Indonesia. I pledged I’d never be a sea turtle biologist after visiting a turtle beach for the first time in 1989.  Sea turtles nest at night, therefore, beach monitors are nocturnal. The hot, humid daylight hours make sleep uncomfortable, especially in a tent or hammock, so the sea turtle biologist engages in sleep deprivation throughout the season. It’s one thing to accept this lifestyle for a week, but quite another to commit to a six-month season. I have tremendous respect for anybody that works at a turtle beach, and especially for those at Jamursba-Medi.

We begin our nightly trek to Warmamedi soon after the sun disappears behind the horizon. During the evening, two teams patrol the beach for turtles that laboriously crawl up the beach to create a nest and lay eggs. Each nesting leatherback performs an intricate set of choreographed movements to create a body pit and nest cavity, then she deposits her eggs and disguises the nest. The hind flippers do the digging and are remarkably dexterous. The entire performance is astonishing, and I’ve never met anybody that wasn’t pleasantly shocked after witnessing it for the first time.

After she creates the nest cavity, the turtle enters a trance-like state and the eggs begin to fall. Once she deposits 10-12 eggs, we begin our work. Like a pit crew at a road racing event, our team works quickly to attach a flexible custom-fitted harness and satellite-linked transmitter, measures her carapace length and width, obtains a skin sample for DNA analysis, and inserts a Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tag for permanent identification. The PIT tag is the size of a grain of rice and is inserted beneath the skin. It's like the PIT tags that veterinarians put in pet dogs and cats. We have special wands or ‘readers’ that can read the tag, similar to the way a grocery clerk scans the bar codes of the items you purchase at the supermarket. After 10-15 minutes, the turtle will emerge from the trance, so we must work well as a team to accomplish everything.
Once again, the leatherbacks arrive late, well after the half moon has set. By 4 a.m., we’ve attached transmitters to two turtles. Rain begins to fall and we think about beginning the hike back to camp when the beach patrollers report that another turtle has emerged from the sea to lay eggs. It’s the ‘Dawn Turtle’. Everybody would rather get a few hours sleep during the cool dawn hours before the tropical heat makes sleeping an uncomfortably sweaty experience, but a turtle on the beach is worth two in the ocean, so we stay. The dawn turtle experience is always bittersweet. It’s nice to see a turtle without a flashlight but we’re nearly sleepwalking at this hour. Furthermore, the dawn brings out the bugs. The annoying sand flies, mosquitoes and other winged insects are always present, but they’re particularly bothersome during the dawn, especially after some rain. After deploying the third transmitter of the night to the dawn turtle, we’re entertained by a symphony of tropical bird calls as the forest wakes for a new day. Most of the birds are too small to see within the dense jungle cover, but I find  some hornbills and palm cockatoos as they fly overhead. We stumble back to camp tired, wet, but happy…three more turtles tagged. Written on July 22,2007, in Jamursba-Medi, Indonesia.