Mark McGinley's Fulbright in Malaysia: Pulau Tenggol- Sea Turtle Egg Laying

As anyone who has ever been diving knows, floating in the water watching fish and coral, eating, and napping in the sun are exhausting work, so usually divers hit the sack a little earlier than normal. I crashed around 9:00 PM on Friday night, but I must have been in a party mood on Saturday because I made it all the way to 9:30. I was just getting ready to turn in when one of my cabin mates told me there was a sea turtle laying eggs on the beach!! I have seen sea turtles lay eggs on many times on the Discovery Channel but I doubted that I would ever get to see it in person. I guess it is a pretty common sight along the east coast of Malaysia so most people had seen it before. I was a "sea turtle egg laying virgin" so I thought it was supercool!

The green sea turtle (I think) who was a bit less than one meter long, was digging her nest just a couple of meters from where we sat and relaxed between dives. She started digging a nest hole next to a boat that was stored on the beach. After at least an hour of digging she left that hole, moved about 2 meters and started digging a new hole. The front flippers of sea turtles are amazing adaptations for swimming, but are not the most efficient shovels. The female digs a nest by throwing back sand with a swimming motion of her front flippers. After working on her second hole for 45 minutes to an hour she abandoned that hole, moved a few more meters, and started digging yet another hole. I don't know whether she dug multiple holes in because she failed to find a suitable egg laying spot, or to try to make it harder for predators to discover her true nest. Finally she was satisfied and eventually she started to lay eggs.

One of the guys that worked at the resort had formerly worked at a turtle hatchery so he knew how to work with the turtle. He was able to sneak up behind the turtle, reach his hand into the ground beneath the turtle, and dig a hole to where the turtle was releasing his eggs. He had me join him on the sand and I was able to reach my hand below her body into the hole where she actually laid eggs in my hand!!! Unbelieveable!!!

The eggs are leathery and about the size of golf balls. I didn't get an exact final count of the number of eggs that she laid, but it must have been somewhere between 75and 100 eggs. The people from the resort collected the eggs and will rebury them on a part of the beach that they protect from visitors and potential predators. I think they said that these eggs would hatch in about 80 days. Maybe I will be able to see the little turtles make a mad dash to the sea before I leave Malaysia.

We had to be careful not to scare the turtle while she was digging the nest. Fortunately, there was enough light filtering down from the resort that you could see everthing very clearly. But once she was busy laying eggs it appears that nothing could distract her! She obviously attracted a big crowd and she didn't seem to care when people petted her or took her picture.

Eventually, she finished laying eggs and began the slow process of covering up the eggs by throwing sand on them, just as she did to dig the nest. We were able to stand close enough to her during this process that she would throw sand on us as well (one guy got sand in his camera). The burial process was quite slow and by then it had started to rain and I was tired so I left her to finish her night on the beach all alone.