Following our night in the desert and swim at Wadi Ben Khalid, we both needed to wash up, so we were very happy that our room had a lovely shower. Once clean, we got back into the car to drive a few minutes further to the Arabian Sea coast. This is where Oman's famous Ras al Jinz Turtle Reserve is, and we wanted to sign up for a tour later tonight.
Once that was done, we found an isolated spot by the sea to watch the sun set. Once again, Omani landscapes are impressive!
We returned to the lodge for dinner and then, at 20:45, headed back to the turtle reserve for our 21:00 tour. We were amazed at how many other people were here, especially since it is the low season. During the summer is the best time to see the turtles, when apparently thousands of mother turtles come ashore nightly to lay their eggs, and even more thousands of baby turles are hatching and trying to make it to the sea. But still here in February there were over a hundred people here hoping to see turtles. The park runs two tours a day, one at 5:00 and the other at 21:00. As far as we understand, although there is definitely a peak season, turtles do come ashore year round, just in much lower numbers. So, we had been assured that it was quite likely we would see turtles, but likely only in the single digits, not hundreds or thousands.
The park staff can obviously handle the crowds, and we were split up into buses, and then at the beach further divided into groups of about ten. Each group was then led by a guide, who did a good job of explaining what we were watching and how the mother turtles go about digging their nests, laying their eggs, burying their nests, and even creating decoy holes to confuse foxes. A red flashlight is used, apparently red being a colour that minimizes the disruption to the turtle.
We actually saw this mother drop an egg as we watched, although I did not manage to catch that on video. You can see, however, the hole in which she is laying here eggs here.
In this video, you can see her beginning to bury the nest with her back flippers.
At this point, she is beginning to use her much more powerful front flippers. She is spraying sand with so much force that it was hitting me in the shins!
Obviously, people want to see baby turtles as well as the mothers, but there were no hatching nests on the beach we were on tonight. A park employee, however, brought a baby from another beach so that we got to see one. I am not sure if transporting a baby from one beach to another is a responsible thing to do, but I would like to think these folks know what they are doing. The babies are small--about the size of a human palm--and quite the contrast to the enormous adults!
Apparently, regardless of whether or not babies are being moved between beaches, their odds of survival are extremely low, as foxes, seagulls, and so on are highly likely to get them before they reach the sea. I believe we were told something like one out of a thousand survive to adulthood!
During the high season I understand you can see dozens or hundreds of adult turtles and, I guess, potentially thousands of babies, which is almost hard to imagine. As it was though we felt pretty lucky to have seen a couple of mothers and the baby and we were totally thrilled with the experience.
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