smelly but i can bear it

One of the things most people hate about turtle conservation is cleaning up turtle nests. Everyone said it smelled bad.

The whole process goes like this: mother turtles come to lay eggs ➡️ baby turtles hatch ➡️ baby turtles climb out ➡️ turtle nests must be cleaned after a few days

This cleaning is not the kind of cleaning with feathers. It is to dig out empty eggshells, unhatched eggs, small turtles that are relatively slow and have not had time to keep up with the brigade, and hatched but dead baby turtles. Come out, make records, ventilate the ground by the way, and kill mold.

We lie down on the sand, follow the marker rope buried in the sand, and dig a small hole like a tunnel, about the size that one hand can fit in. We use our hands to feel what we have dug, so every time we dig It came out as a surprise, like Forrest Gump's chocolate.

Occasionally, a bunch of fire ants will be dug up. I don't know how lucky I was that time. I dug a nest of sea turtles that were being eroded by fire ants, but I didn't get a bite. At that time, it was just to check whether the turtle eggs hatched, not to clean the turtle nest, but I had to take out all the sand with fire ants and put new sand in, otherwise the nest of turtle eggs would have died before hatching. .

I heard a very interesting saying, you have to bury them so they can live.

A lot of things are like this, and when they are dead, they can turn around. One day I wanted to be a fool, but I was so bad that I didn't worry about my foolishness. After a certain point in time, I got up and started doing things.

Clean up the smell of turtle nests, I haven't smelled this anywhere else, wet sand + rot + moldy smell.

It's weird, I enjoy these moments, but I didn't tell anyone about it, I just said I didn't reject it.

I love watching maggots wriggle on dead turtles, especially maggots. My dissertation was originally intended to be about this, but it was changed for various reasons.

I couldn't take such photos. My hands were very dirty when I was working, so it was not suitable to take photos with my mobile phone, and there was no one around to take photos for me.

During the internship, sea turtle conservation was done by foreign volunteers living on the island, while the locals were all doing business. I think it's a bit strange, why should foreigners guard my place? Everyone may see different things.

Hanka and I were cleaning turtle nests once. After we dug up all the products in the turtle nest, we took inventory and took pictures. We need to open the unhatched turtle eggs to see what's going on inside, and I love doing that too, excited.

Hanka told me that I think cleaning up a child's poop is much better than this.

I said, really? I think this is okay, I can live with it.

Hanka said, then you have the potential to be a biologist.

Hanka is the mother of three children. While we were doing these things, her kids were not far away, chasing each other shirtless, and fell, covered their whole body with white sand, and looked like fried chicken that was about to be fried. .

To be honest, I couldn't help feeling inspired after hearing what Hanka said. Yeah, being able to do things that other people can't stand is probably my forte.

There is another thing that I was really excited about during my internship.

We have learned how to find turtle nests. After the mother turtles come to lay eggs, there will be obvious walking marks on the beach, which is to inform the world that there are turtle eggs here, which will attract greedy fishermen to steal the turtle eggs and sell them. The profit is very high.

So we act fast, get there before everyone else, and we can keep the nest of eggs safe.

The process of finding a nest is a bit complicated. It is necessary to infer which footprint is the landing and landing based on the footprints of the mother turtle. Usually, two footprints are used, but there may be more than two. Walk around on the beach to pick a new spot. After the turtle lays eggs, she will camouflage. She will splash sand while crawling on her front feet. In order to hide her spawning location, she will take a rest before going to sea. The camouflage of the turtle mother is the last love for the little turtle, and it may not be seen in the future.

Therefore, inexperienced people can't dig turtle eggs. Those fishermen who come to steal eggs actually have a hand, but the method is a bit rough and can break a lot of eggs, because they think it doesn't matter. For them, it's not just a few eggs less profit.

But from a conservation point of view, every egg is life and must be handled with care.

Back to the thing I just got excited about, that is, I've found turtle eggs twice! Really excited! What no one else could do, I did, fluttering, I swelled.

I am a little familiar with the feeling of being close to turtle eggs when digging sand. The sand is soft and easy to collapse. The roots of trees will be broken (mother broke when digging holes), and the dug out sand will attract flies ( When mother lays eggs, there is mucus, and when sand gets on the mucus, it attracts flies).

Working with the turtles during my internship made me want to develop in this direction even more.

I think these things I've come across are amazing, maybe a guide.