Hatcheries give young turtles better start in life

By Ida Indawati Khouw

JAKARTA (JP): No safe passage, no mother to provide protection ... a baby sea turtle crawls from its nest to the sea across a minefield of danger, as birds scour the beach for food.

Parental supervision is rare in reptiles and virtually absent in turtles. Once laid in a pit dug above high tide level, turtle eggs -- about 100 -- are left alone.

When the turtle hatchling claws its way to the surface, 40 days to 60 days later, its only protection is in numbers, which means the eggs always hatch in unison.

But only a handful of baby turtles make it to the sea, and some never get to start the journey, but are taken from the nest by predators, which include humans.

The turtle hatching and rearing camp on Pramuka Island in the Thousand Island Marine National Park, North Jakarta, has been set up to give young turtles a better start in life.

One of several turtle camps works to boost the number of young hawksbill turtles, which are the most prevalent in the national park.

The hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata), which is the smallest of the sea turtles, has a carapace length of 70 cm to 90 cm and can be recognized by its overlapping plates.

Dr. Col Limpus, a turtle expert from Australia's Department of Environment, who visited the camp recently, said turtle hatching and rearing centers are rare.

"It's appropriate for Indonesia to have one because six of the seven turtle species in the world are found here," he said.

The main activity of the 800-square-meter camp is to hatch, rear, tag and release hawksbills. The process starts with camp workers collecting turtle eggs from several islands of the national park.

The camp's vice manager, Umikalsum Boer, said that two decades ago, many of the sandy beaches of the 108 islands around the park were perfect nesting grounds for hawksbills.

"Since then, people have occupied the islands and their presence interferes with nesting. Only a few islands are left as turtle nesting grounds," she said.

Using large plastic buckets, camp staff collect eggs from beaches and take them to the hatching building, where the eggs, still in the buckets, are buried in sand.

Umikalsum said that when the turtles hatch, about half of the survivors are released immediately and the other half are taken to the rearing building and placed in 10 tanks.

"We have to release half because the capacity of the tanks is limited," she said. The tanks measure 1.5 meters by two meters and hold up to 100 hatchlings up to one month old.

The retained baby turtles are fed twice a day with chopped coral fish, which have had their scales and bones removed. "We have to prepare about 10 kilograms of chopped fish daily," Umikalsum said.

The rearing tanks are kept filled with sea water, which is circulated continuously to maintain a natural environment. Camp workers change the water every two days, after they clean the tanks.

Umikalsum said that the cleaning is required to prevent the turtles from contracting white fungus, which is the biggest potential problem in the rearing process.

"White fungus encourages turtles to bite each other, leading to damage of flippers and eyes. This also happens in the wild," she said.

Umikalsum said that after one month, half of the retained hatchlings are released, so that the other half can have more space. More are released after three months and six months.

Camp workers measure the size and weight of the growing turtles regularly.

After three months, the turtles are tagged and released. The tags enable researchers to study the distribution of the released turtles.

Up until last October, the camp had hatched 2,533 hawksbills and released 1,380 hatchlings.

According to Col Limpus, many of the hatchlings will eventually find their way "home" to the camp because, at the time of hatching, the baby turtles are imprinted with information about where they were born.

Limpus said the turtle's brain is able to detect the earth's magnetic field and this makes it possible for the turtle to find its way back.

The operational costs of the turtle camp are provided by a Japan-based organization to the Directorate General of Forest Protection and Nature Conservation, which is responsible for running the institution.