Me and my grandson Ned think turtles are pretty cool.
If you don't think the same, what kind of person are you? Please don't tell me you like turtle soup. That's enough to make me want to cry.
I've free dived and snorkelled with turtles before and could spend hours watching them. They're so graceful and such adept swimmers, despite their hard shells. The thought of them being endangered breaks my heart. In Bali, there's also an illegal turtle trade, where they're used for ceremony, meat or souvenirs. Whilst it's illegal, it's not enforced very well.
Places like this conservation sanctuary worry me too. I'm not entirely convinced that these venues don't stress out the turtles in shallow pens and subject them to stress and potential harm through prioritising tourist interactions over genuine conservation efforts. How do you know?.
A bit of research made me feel more comfortable. In this place in Sanur, the Sindhu Dwarawati Turtle Conservation Centre stands is meant to be reputable, dedicating to the protection and rehabilitation of sea turtles.
There are three turtle species native to the region here - the Green Sea Turtle, Hawksbill Sea Turtle, and Olive Ridley Sea Turtle. The sanctuary plays a really important role in safeguarding these species from habitat destruction and illegal hunting.
They rescue injured turtles, rehabilitate them, and relase the healthy ones back into the wild. It also serves as an educational hub, raising awareness about marine creatures and the dangers they face.
It operates primarily on donations, so if you are walking along the Sanur waterfront, pop some spare IDR into their donation box. They have feedings twice a day as well so you can even feed the turtles for a more interactive experience.
I could have stood watching these beautiful creatures for hours, and felt sad that tourism is partly to blame for threatening them, especially as beach resorts pop up and endanger the nesting areas. Here they had rescued eggs buried in the sand - at some sanctuaries you can see the baby turtles, like we did on Gili Meno in 2018.
In the end the best experience I had was snorkelling out the front of our hotel and seeing a turtle come out of the deep. It scared the bejesus out of me at first, until I realised waht it was. I flippered after it for a while, but it was a better swimmer than me, and again disappeared into the deep blue.
Go well, turtle. May you be safe from poachers and may your offspring survive to have many babies too.
With Love,
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