Broward County, FL
19 September 2016
Wrong way sea turtle. © J. Manos
Baby sea turtle mayhem, flapping around in circles on the boardwalk at midnight, drawn by the streetlights into certain death. I felt like that crazy lady in Poltergeist who was yelling at her daughter “Don’t go into the light!!!”
Screengrab from Poltergeist
I picked them up and hurried their flipper-flapping little bodies down to the water’s edge and placed them on the wet sand where the slosh of waves would for sure re-orient them but no…. they scrambled mad back up onto shore toward the lights instead of out into the ocean and life.
© J. Manos
I fought them like a determined parent, turning them around each time they came out of the wave wash and tried to climb back up onto the beach. Little light-possessed mf’s.
© J. Manos
20 minutes of in-and-out little bodies, washing out with the last wave, then coming back in and clamoring for sand.
And, finally, one by one, I didn’t see them anymore.
Out to sea.
I know some of them will get ate up real quick out there.
But they’re in their home.
And some will make it.
And return years from now to climb back onto this same beach and lay eggs in a nest they dig with grown flippers into the sand.
I hope they live to be a hundred years.
All gone. Somewhere out there the just-hatched baby sea turtles are now swimming, And just the sargassum and sand and me are left here on shore. © J. Manos
All sea turtles are now endangered.
They’ve been around since the dinosaurs.
This is actually my first time coming upon a live sea turtle hatching, even though there is a scene with them in my upcoming novel Her Blue Watered Streets.
OK nesting season is over for another year.
Eggshell remnants of hatched sea turtle nest. Their shells are soft and leathery, not hard like bird eggs. © J. Manos
Sea turtle nest back in June, right after the massacre at the Orlando nightclub. © GPRC
Rescued several baby sea turtles who were going around in mayhem on the boardwalk .. poor lil mf’s got all disoriented after hatching and went to the lights on the boardwalk instead of the sea. They were fighting me too but I got them all in. Only kept my flashlight on for a second to film. They finally figured shit out in the dark like it’s supposed to be — after the waves hit them several times. I hope the lil mfs live a hundred years. They would’ve died def. The streets are for me not them.