Wow, this season is really flying by!
September gave us great skies and moons, with planets and meteor showers visible!
We can hardly believe it is October already.
What that means to us is that we are full throttle, in the busiest part of the nesting season! And we watch the numbers go up and up! We are now seeing some nights with more than 20 patrol entries (this includes nests rescued, poached and everything in between).
So our numbers for September were very exciting!
We rescued 241 nests containing 22,216 eggs. These are all happily incubating in our hatchery as I type. Happy, happy, joy, joy!! Nine of these nests were adopted. On our busiest night, 15 nests were rescued.
We tagged 33 females and greeted one ‘return customer’ who was tagged LAST SEASON!
But, we lost 49 nests to human poachers during September, and 5 to dogs.
We also lost 2 nesting females to human poachers and had 2 attacked by dogs. One of these was dead when we found her, but in the other case our patrol volunteers came upon the attack and chased the dogs away. The injured female made her way back to the sea and we hope against hope that she heals and survives. Pictures below at the very bottom of this post…they are graphic, so don’t scroll down if you don’t want to see.
There are the culprits…2 have been on this beach for years without a problem. Then a new dog showed up, and sadly taught them a new trick.
In addition, 33 females came on the beach but did not lay eggs. We call this a ‘false crawl’. Honesty here, I call it a ‘Walk About’. Sometimes they are just not ready, but sometimes something on the beach (people, dogs, debris blocking their way, bright lights in the beachfront houses) makes them return to the sea without nesting.
We finished filling our Corral #1 (376 spaces) this month and almost filled up Corral #2 (168 spaces).
So that is the story for September, 2020.
New to the monthly post is ‘Best Picture’. The award this month goes to Felipe.
We are making some changes to patrol routines this month, maybe we can disrupt the poachers’ routines and have less than 49 nests lost in October. For obvious reasons, I’ll not share the details. Tune in next month to see if we were successful 🙂
Welcome new volunteers Luis & Gissel! It is great to have you on our team.
What else did we do this month? Well, we had some work done on the ATV. When there is a lot of debris on the beach, flat tires are hard to avoid. We replaced 2 tires this month, along with a battery. Maintenance costs are a constant here at Ayotlcalli!
So, of course here comes the ‘How you can help’ part of the post! Buttons below you will take you to different ways to donate.
If you happen to live on our beach and are reading this, there are a couple of other things you can do:
- Replace any bright lights that shine on the beach with amber or red bulbs. Sea turtles find their way to the sea following the bright moonlight reflecting on the waves, so bright porch lights get them very confused. This causes them to be on the (dangerous) beach longer than necessary.
- Be vigilant. If you see a turtle, call or WhatsApp us. Our volunteers will be on a red or white ATV with a cooler and tool box visible. If we are not present, please call us at 281 235-8974.
As always, thank you and muchisimas gracias for your support!
Keep yourselves safe and healthy,
The Ayotlcalli Team
The girl above did not make it. Below, she made it back to the sea and we hope survived.