The Eco Tour (2)
Of the world’s seven species of marine turtles, five come ashore to nest in Sri Lanka. They are the green turtle (Chelonia mydas), olive ridley turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea), loggerhead (Caretta caretta), hawksbill (Eritmochilys imbricata) and leatherback (Dermochylys coriacea). The 2.5 km long stretch of beach across the Rekawa lagoon on which we now stood provides the nesting ground for over 70% of Sri Lanka’s green turtles. Despite the protection of marine turtles under government legislation since 1972, they are still being exploited for their meat, eggs and carapaces. Pollution (especially by polythene bags) and habitat deterioration pose further threats. Although they can live for over 100 years, female turtles do not reach sexual maturity until they are about 13 years old.
While protecting turtles at sea is fraught with difficulties, protected hatcheries provide a managable approach to conservation. Until recently, practically all the eggs which were laid along populated stretches of the coastline were poached.
The Turtle Conservation Project (TCP) in Sri Lanka was established in 1993. Along with carrying out research on adult turtles, the organisation established hatcheries, buying eggs from poachers at the same or slightly higher price as in the local market and transferring them to supervised stretches of beach.
The TCP approach to conservation is community-orientated. Their philosophy is that effective conservation can only be achieved with local involvement. With natural resources being over-exploited, conservation-related projects have to provide an alternative source of income. Many former poachers are now employed in hatcheries or as tourist guides, turtle watches are promoted in local guesthouses as well as by international tour operators and the organisation runs projects in local schools. In 1995, the TCP launched a series of educational workshops, training community members in environmental subjects relevant to the area. These ‘Community Environmental Education Trainers’ now work with local schools and community groups. Their projects include a mangrove nursery, traditional medicinal garden, promotion of traditional herbal drinks and a library. In addition, the organisation has established a medical centre. All in all, they seem to run Rekawa.
Since 1994, the TCP has been teaching English classes aimed to increase the employment prospects for local people and improve the communication skills of those working for TCP projects or as tour guides. I do not know whether these classes are still running as neither my guide nor the field officer on duty appeared to have benefited much from English language training.
My guide rapped on the door of the hut and a man stirred on a bunk inside a shady room, then emerged, blinking, into the sunlight. He introduced himself as Lalith, the field officer in charge of the beach hut. We sat down on a bench in front of which were displayed the impressive carapasses of several different species of turle. Lalith showed me a jar full of pickled striped leatherback hatchlings. The place looked like a storage room in the natural history museum. He went out and returned with a stuffed, half-naked bird perched on a twig like a vulture. It was grotesque.
“You want to see baby turtles?”, he asked, “250 rupees.”
I agreed since I was already here. I expected they would keep the hatchlings in holding tanks for a few days before releasing them as is common practise in some hatcheries, although it does the turtles no good. But Lalith walked to the slope leading down to the beach where a number of nests had been carefully marked and labelled, all of them belonging to green turtles. He crouched down and started to dig.
“Oh no!” I fretted, “Please, do not disturb!”
“Don’t worry” he said and pulled out two baby turles from the hole: “They go to sea tonight. See, no more yolk!”
I saw — that was what worried me as I looked at the hatchlings frantically paddling in the air. Lalith handed one to me. It was cold and clammy, like a dead man’s hand which left me feeling slightly queazy. I handed it back quickly. Still, I had seen and experienced what I had come to do. On the way back, I felt a mixture of excitement and guilt. I had presented an intrusion and disturbed the turtles but, on the other hand, money from tourism is what keeps projects like these going.
Even before we had left the hut, rain hard started to fall in fat drops. Both Lalith and the guide looked relieved when I shrugged and indicated to head back anyway. We had been struggling to communicate with each other and I wanted to prevent a long and awkward silence. However, back in the mangroves, the sky opened and the guide dragged me under the trees. Here we crouched, sharing my last soggy cigarette which, to his disgust was the cheapest local brand. I had run out of my usual, but I still had one of these left figuring I’d never get around to smoking it. If I thought non-filter Gauloises harsh, this was the tobacco-equivalent of a double espresso. Between tokes, we coughed and kept picking bits of tobacco from our lips, but it satisfied our nicotine craving. Smoke finished, we huddled for a while, staring through gaps in the canopy at the grey sky. The rain looked to settle. The guide turned towards me and edged a little closer.
‘Oh no’, I thought: ‘here we go!’. Right enough, he started to make advances. This could get out of hand. I jumped up and, soaked as I was by now anyway, walked out into the rain at speed, towards the boat. I was entirely prepared to cast off and row the thing back on my own, leaving the guide stranded, but of course he soon caught up with me. However, he got the message, and we paddled back over the rain-pocketed lagoon without further incident. Perhaps it had occured to him that it was not wise to molest a passenger who had been recommended by his regular patrons at NARA.
Back at the junction between dirt track and the asphalt road (it felt like re-surfacing in civilisation) I was faced with a dilemna. Go back to Tangalle or press on to Rekawa? The rain had left the air refreshed and the land looked lush and green, so walking was pleasant. It couldn’t be far to the village.
A short way down the road, a jeep pulled up. Improbably, it was marked ‘Buckingham Palace’. The guys inside offered me a lift, dripping wet though I was. I told them I was here to find out more about turtles and hoped to talk to some english-speaking volunteers in the village or one of the resort hotels. They looked at me blankly.
“It’s just down the road, according to the sign!”
“Yes, well, the sign is rubbish!”
We drove down the road until we reached a bus-stop decorated with turtles and the TCP logo (they do run the place) then veered off into another dirt track that wound its way past paddies and scattered settlements. On the way, the guys explained that they were in the process of constructing a new hotel called the ‘Buckingham Palace Resort’ (that explained the logo) which they hoped to open in the near future. They dropped me in the compound and pointed up the beach where they said there was a hatchery. Before I went off, I shook their hands and wished them good luck with their venture.
As I walked up the white sand, I realized that the place looked strangely familiar. Sure enough, we had rounded the entire lagoon and I was now approaching the TCP Beach Hut from the seaward site. Lalith could not quite believe his eyes as I greeted him for a second time that day. There was no point in explaining how I got there.
“Just dropped in to say good-bye” I said, grinning sheepishly and pumping his hand: “And to say what good work you are doing here!” Then I waved cheerfully and turned back, in the direction where he had indicated I might find the bus stop. On the way, it started to rain again.
There were only a few buses between Rekawa and Tangalle each day and Lalith had said something about 5:30 which was over two hours away. There was a guy waiting at the stop, but he was headed for Hambantota in the other direction and he either did not know when the bus was due or did not understand my question. So I stopped a tuk-tuk, some of which drove past even in this remote area, but the driver looked insulted that someone as wet and bedraggled as me had the audacity to haggle (“200rs to Tangalle?”) and drove off in a huff. So when the Hambantota bus finally arrived, I jumped on board. I did not want to be stranded for hours on my own.
The area was lightly settled and the town of Rekawa was spread over quite a distance. We had driven for a good 10 minutes before we passed a sign pointing to the Darwin Beach Resort.
I rode to the first stop on the main road towards Ranna for 10 rs, ran across the road and jumped straight onto another bus which took me back to Tangalla for another 10 rs. Feeling lucky, I bought cigarettes and a coconut for my evening drink and set off towards the guesthouse. The rain, having eased slightly, started up again.
When I had crossed the bridge over the Kirama Oya for the second time, I realised I was lost and took out the rain-soggy map. The Santana Guest House was on the other side of the river. I was exhausted from all the walking and activity of the day and the unrelenting rain was sapping my energy. I was also dehydrated, my water bottles had been empty since rowing back across the lagoon. So I drank the coconut juice. It left me instantly refreshed and re-charged. It was sweet, hence contained energy, along with vitamins and minerals. It struck me that this was the perfect sports-drink.
On the bus back to the west coast, my thoughts returned to the whales. I never found out where Uda Point was, but we had passed through Dondra where there was a sign ‘Dondra Lighthouse 1.6 km’.
The lighthouse, built by the British in 1889 and still maintained by the British government, marks Sri Lanka’s southernmost point. It had served as a base for land-based observations during the National Marine Mammal Program. As soon as I had seen the map on the ship, I had resolved to spend a few days here whale-watching. However, during the NMMP research, four NARA field workers spent three solid days on top of the lighthouse at about the same time of year as now without seeing a single whale or dolphin. The keeper only reported a single sighting which he said had occured about six years previously. It didn’t sound very promising.
Blue whales have been known to come as close as 1 mile to within shore here during the krill season (June-December), but even then an extraordinary amount of luck would be needed to spot them. In any case, I was too late for the krill. I did not fancy holding a long vigil without any hope of success. I briefly debated whether I should enquire with the lighthouse keepers about recent sightings but decided against it. There was too much tourism in this area. Visitors were forever requesting to climb the lighthouse and being turned away. I would probably not even get close to anybody with any information. It was not worth losing a day over. It was the 6th of January and people would return from their Christmas leave tomorrow. I decided to go back to make some appointments.
Denni