Hide in Your Shell

Wall Art made from Plastic Retrieved from the Beach

So here's what we do. Wake up time is 6:30, or about 3 hours earlier than we wake up at home. A kilometre walk to the terminal building where we catch the ferry to Fitzroy Island, home to a resort and some incredible beaches, and a resto bar. More on that later. 
Forty five minute ride across the bay and we disembark, walk 250 meters to the rescue centre, passing a cluster of cockatoos along the way and our morning travails commence. 

There are turtles of various shapes and sizes belonging to 2 species - Ridley and Green. The Green turtle is thusly named based on the colour of its meat, due to its dietary ingestion of sea grass. I will take their word for it, having no desire to verify the veracity of the claim by cutting one open. How Ridleys are named remains a riddle to me.

Lunch

Step one is creating a siphon to allow a vacuum to be created. The hose is attached to a plastic tube that looks like a standard vacuum cleaner cylinder. With siphon siphoning we begin to suck out the overnight turtle excrement from each holding tank. It is an easy task since most of the turtle dung is captured in three filters, which we also remove and clean.

Next step is skimming the surfaces to allow for the collection of any particles which may have eluded the siphoning and filtering process. Is this getting too technical for you? 

While the skim/clean/siphon procedures are underway other volunteers are preparing the turtles' meals. 

Squid Tartare

They consist of 1) some type of small fish - head removed, 2) shrimp (prawns in Aussie), peeled also sans tête, and 3) squid in their entirety. At Milos, the same meal would cost $150.

All the turtles are named, and suffer from a variety of health issues, the primary one called floaters being a collection of gas between their bodies and shells. Had you told me at any point in my life that my volunteer work would involve encouraging turtle flatulence, I might have thought probably not.

What is truly amazing is the interpersonal relationship one can develop with these creatures (full disclosure - on more than one occasion, people I know have likened certain physical attributes of mine as being reptilian). And not just because I'm in the Real Estate biz. My eyes turn down at the corners, I enjoy warming myself on large rocks and I identified more closely with Koopah as played by Dennis Hopper in the Super Mario movie than I did with the "good guy" primate strain.

Shaz

Let me tell you about Shaz. She has a dent in the side of her shell, the result of having netting wrapped around her for numerous years. Had I named her, she would have been Bucky but that's another tail. Turtles love having their shells scratched; like people and their backs. After feeding Shaz, I hung out, gave her a good scratch and invented a game called Turtle Launch. I would grab the back of her shell and shove it, propelling her across her tank. She loved it. How do I know? Because she would swim right back to me and wait for another ride. 

To determine how much of her actions were merely based on repetition of motion, I moved to different parts of the tank. She would lift her head out of the water, determine my new location and swim over for another push. Shaz and I spent a couple of hours playing this game together. One of the on site vets mentioned that my new friend had not had that much enrichment in the six months she'd been there.

Now I know that this may sound a bit weird but the interaction I shared with my new reptile friend is on par with volunteer work in previous years in various countries teaching children English, cleaning them up, cooking them lunch or sending them to school. Improving the lot of any living creature on this beautiful Earth, four legged, two legged, rooted in the soil, is in and of itself a good thing.

Lori going from Turtle Pool to Pool Shark