With a huge effort the turtle drags herself up the beach. Her flippers are designed for swift movement under water, so shifting her huge body weight 20 metres up the sand is not easy. Any distraction – a barking dog, and obstructing branch – and she will give up and return to the sea. In the moonlight on Rekawa beach near Tangalla, the green turtle is completing a lifelong mission to lay her eggs. Norny and I and some of the other CWW volunteers were lucky enough to witness it.
Once the female turtle is at the top of the beach, she completes the laborious process of digging an egg pit, lay around 100 eggs, and covering them with sand. Our guide tells us that while she lays we can get close as she will be in a kind of trance. Not surprising given the number of eggs she has to lay in just 30 minutes. We get close enough to touch her shell and even feel the eggs, while by torchlight the staff measure her shell and look for distinctive markings.
The Rekawa Turtle Conservation Project uses local staff and volunteers to close off a stretch of beach, and guard the laying turtles and their eggs from wild predators and humans alike. While turtle eggs don’t often arrive on the breakfast table back in the UK, in Sri Lanka eating them used to be quite common – particularly as many of the turtle species were much more abundant in the recent past. Although it is now illegal, human consumption of these eggs may be a reason why all five of the species of turtle that occur in the waters around Sri Lanka are endangered.
After burying her precious offspring in the sand, our green turtle turns back down to the sea, the whole process taking more than two hours. Turtles will travel many thousands of miles to complete this laying process, and they usually return to the beach where they themselves hatched, but once she returns to the water her parental duty is over. That is why the eggs need guarding, like at Rekawa, or alternatively protected hatching and some hand rearing.
At Koggala Turtle Hatchery we saw the alternative model of care for the offspring. Here they pay locals to collect the eggs, and bury them in an enclosed sand pit. After approximately 65 days, incubated only by the warmth of the sun, the eggs hatch out and the keepers transfer the baby turtles to a tank for a few days, to build up some strength. This also gave Norny and I a great opportunity to take a look at the baby turtles and also some older ones that they have at the project for educational purposes. 
Norny held a three day old green turtle.
This loggerhead was around four years old.
We also had the chance while we were there to release some into the sea. Setting the ten olive ridleys on the beach we couldn’t help wondering how many would survive the short journey into the open ocean, dodging hungry tuna fish and wriggling through fishing nets. Would any of “our” turtles live long enough to reach full size and to struggle up the beach to lay their eggs? At least with these two conservation projects they stand a slightly better chance.
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