Turtle power

The sands of Ras-al Jinz on the north-eastern tip of Oman are pregnant with thousands of little turtles. Nightly in late summer, a hundred huge mums-to-be appear from of the Arabian Sea to lay their eggs on the long stretches of coast.

We are camping on the cliffs which overlook and protect the sands below. Through the dusk the beach looks like a minefield, riddled with giant craters connected by the day-old juggernaut tracks of these prehistoric creatures, and overlaid with the criss-crossing footprints of agile desert foxes looking for an eggy feast.

At about ten o’clock we see a mountainous shell coming a-humping out of the breaking waves. Sadly, she is discouraged by our torch, so heaves herself into reverse, which makes me feel pretty awful. We switch off and decide to resume Turtlewatch at dawn.

At five, we see two beaky beasts hoisting their exhausted bulk out of their sand-holes and disappearing back into the sea, like mysterious boulders. Childbirth’s got to be a tough job no matter which species you are, but these green turtles weighing in at around 150kg leave their natural watery habitat, climb twenty metres uphill, then dig deep hollows. Mother-to-be then lays a clutch of a hundred eggs inside, deftly covers the nest with sand, and then huffs and puffs and pulls her massiveness out of the hole. And there’s more. We gape as she then sets about making an ingenious postnatal decoy to divert predators away from the eggs, which should lie in secrecy for two months. Using her paddle-like flippers, she strenuously creates a second, bigger pit to outfox the hungry scavengers. Satisfied, she turns around, entrusting her babies to this very same beach from which she was born, and returns to the sea.

As light creeps upwards from the horizon and the smile of an Islamic moon fades, an army of titchy turtles start their race for the sea. It’s inspirational, sitting on the sand, seeing these miniatures emerge from all around, scaling their first mountain just to get out of bed. It’s the toughest journey I’ve ever witnessed – up and down and in and out of the surf, but the baby turtles accept their mission with true and comic enthusiasm. We free a few prisoners from fishing nets and plonk them safely near the shore. Stunningly, their path is lit by electric blue phosphorescence.

I wonder about their lives ahead. What sub-marine chases lie in store? Would they return to this spot to lay their own eggs? Their start in life is fragile, at the mercy of crabs and gulls, and mismatched flippers, or even being run down by their battleship aunts. This part of Oman gets 20,000 adult turtles coming to nest each year, though only two or three hatchlings out of each 10,000 make it to the juggernaut-league themselves. If they get that far, they’re in for the long haul with a lifespan of over a century, full of the secrets of the deep.