North Island / Day 2

Hello dear ones, as you can already see from the pictures, I was lucky yesterday and saw 3 baby turtles. There were only three because most of them hatched in the morning without us noticing. In the evening, we dug up the nest to look for turtles that didn't make it to the surface. And behold, there were still 3 little babies in the nest that we managed to rescue thanks to this action.

As I mentioned before, I went snorkeling yesterday. I have to admit that I have never snorkeled in the open sea before, so it was a completely new experience for me. After some initial problems with saltwater in my eye, it turned out to be quite cool after all. We have to go snorkeling several times a week here to take as many photos as possible of the fish. Then these will be categorized and stored in a file to determine how the fish population changes over the years.

This morning we went back to the beaches and even saw 5 turtle tracks from green turtles (see photo). However, none of them had laid eggs. 5 tracks are still a lot. As I learned today, fortunately, the population of green turtles on the island has increased in recent years. That's great, but we still don't know exactly why. Let's hope it stays that way.

In the afternoon, the sweaty work began. We pulled out coconut palm seedlings. This means that the coconut that fell from the tree started to grow leaves and roots. It was quite exhausting because the roots were already firmly anchored in the ground. We have to pull out these coconut palm trees here because they do not belong to the natural vegetation of the Seychelles and reproduce like weeds and destroy all other plants.

This evening, we got our dinner and went to the West Beach. A colleague had seen that there is also a nest here where the turtles are about to hatch. Unfortunately, we were also a little late here and most of the turtles had already gone. 4 were still walking on the beach and we managed to get 2 out of the nest. One of the turtles touched me in particular (see photo): she had already made it out of the nest but got stuck in a hollow on the beach because she had flipped onto her back. Usually, baby turtles can immediately turn back onto their stomach and continue running, but she couldn't move her hind legs and couldn't do it alone. We helped her turn over and she actually made it to the sea with only two legs. I really hope she will survive.

Afterwards, we enjoyed our dinner on the beach, with the remaining sunset.

At night, it gets so dark here that you can see the Milky Way. I tried to take a picture of it and you can actually see it a little bit ;)

Yes, my dear ones, that was my second day here. I'm curious about what we will do tomorrow.

See you soon.