Chance of a lifetime!

Written by Darcy ...

Big headed, big flippered, big everything, this is the gentle giant, the leather back turtle! Once again we went up to Annie's in the north of Grenada with Auntie Brushy and from 8:30pm to 11:30pm  mummy and I saw the humongous leather back turtle. When we got there it was completely dark and our leader had a red torch, because a normal light would scare them. I was really scared and Annie and Mummy lead the way for me because my eyes were shut because it was so freaky! Suddenly Annie whispered, I can see one and I slowly opened my eyes and a few inches away from was the black creature, first I thought it was a rock because it was massive. 1 and a  half metres long, bigger than me, the flippers were much bigger than my arms, it had loads of lumpy black lines going down its back and was indeed BLACK!!! Its head, all the way across was half a metre. They eat jellyfish, squid and other soft marine creatures. 
We also saw it flicking the sand back to cover the eggs, it was unbelievable, I will remember this forever because I even touched its shell, head and wrinkly flippers it felt like leather, obviously I was a bit scared at first. It was so exiting and scary all at the same time.

The next excitement of the night was another one! As we were going back home we saw it, it was just about to lay its eggs. To dig the hole they use their back flippers to scoop out the sand, I thought they were very clever! When their flipper can't reach the bottom, that is when they start laying their eggs.When  it came a man was holding one of its flippers to count them, I was holding the other. The eggs were not hard but soft, of all different sizes they came out so fast and the man managed to count them. There were 136 eggs!  The mother uses her front and back flippers to cover the eggs, she moves around in circles flicking the sand to disguise where her she's laid, it takes about 45 minutes. We saw her returning to the sea 
.It takes 65 days for the babies to hatch and they are 4 inches long,  the mother comes back to the same spot on the same beach every 3-5 years to lay her eggs! The world record of eggs laid was 158!!!

Leatherbacks are the longest surviving reptiles on the whole of the earth. They live between 30 and 200 years. They are also the largest marine turtle, by far! It makes the Hawksbill turtle look tiny. The one we saw was only about 15 years old and it was nearly 2 metres. They weigh  up to 900 kilos.

I'll never forget this experience!