NOWRAMP
2002
Baby
Honu Are Emerging
September 12, 2002
Posted by: Ann Bell Hudgins
Incredible!
We arrived at French Frigate Shoals yesterday morning at
the height of the turtle hatching season. Four hundred
and
fifty nesting female turtles were recently counted on East
Island (one of eight sandy islets within the large atoll),
the second highest number recorded here in history! The
islands and islets of this atoll are literally 'busting
open at the seams' as hundreds of baby honu, or green sea
turtles, are emerging from their nests to voyage out to
sea. Female turtles use their flippers to dig wide, four-foot
holes in the sand to lay their eggs. A Refuge biologist
is quoted as saying that it looks like East Island was
bombed
because of the hundreds of nest impressions that can be
seen during nesting season. This tiny sand spit is an islet
with a surface area about the size of a school cafeteria.
The estimated number of female turtles nesting on the atoll
is 800! If each female lays three nests holding an average
of 100 eggs per nest that amounts to a total of 240,000
hatchlings each season.
Most
all of the green sea turtles foraging around the main Hawaiian
Islands were hatched from the sands of French Frigate Shoals.
Sea turtle biologist, George Balazs recorded that one healthy
turtle who was tracked by scientists cruised from French
Frigate Shoals at 2.0 km/hr covering a distance of 1,130
km during her 23 day migration to Kane'ohe Bay, on the main
Hawaiian island of O`ahu. When they are old enough (around
20 -25 years old) these turtles return as mature adults
to lay eggs in the same place their flippers first touched
the sea.
A
Native Hawaiian educator who is on our team, Kekuewa Kikiloi
tells me that honu are a very special marine animal to the
Native Hawaiian people. Tradition tells them that these
animals are thought of as `aumakua or ancestral guardians
to some and should be treated with respect and care.
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