Wild (Hawksbill?) Sea Turtle Sighting

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farber2028

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Some of you might have seen the thread that I made just a few days ago. I posted pictures of sea turtle tracks and some nesting sites that my wife and I had found. We're on our honeymoon in St. Croix. Tonight we went on another search and had waaaaayyyyyyyy better luck this time! I'm not 100% sure but I think it's a Hawksbill Sea Turtle. We were both kind of in shock at first, staring at it with our flashlights still on. I didn't want to scare it back into the sea so we turned the lights off and stood quiet for a minute. Most of the pics are when she was making her way up to find a nest. After that we stood by close and watched as she found a spot. She made the nest out our sight but in the dark we could hear and see a ton of sand being flipped around. She was probably up there for about 20 minutes or so. As soon as she started to make her way back to the sea, we tried to take a few more pics. Some of the pics are bad because I was super excited and it was also really hard to see in the dark. There's also a short video I took of her as well!!! Enjoy!

My Wife Stephanie sitting next to the turtle
stephturtle.jpg

turtle1.jpg

turtle2.jpg

turtle3.jpg

turtle4.jpg

turtl5.jpg

turtle6.jpg

turtle7.jpg

turtle8.jpg

turtle9.jpg

The one of the sand is the spot she chose to dig. I'm not 100% sure if she finished or not. If you look closely there's a metal bar underneath the bushes. All in all, she was probably digging/nesting for a good 20 minutes and we couldn't hear any movement for about 5 of those 20. After we took the pics we didn't want to disturb her anymore until she was headed back for the sea.

Here's the video:

Well I don't know how to embed it properly so this link will have to suffice.
http://youtu.be/94uwMSWRMLY
 
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Pokeymeg

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Luuuuucky!! I'm super jealous! I know what I'm doing for my honeymoon now! lol

Thanks for sharing!
 

Irwin4530

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That is so neat, what am exciting experience for you both!
 

wellington

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That is really cool. What a big bonus for you. Btw, Congratulations on your marriage.
 

IBeenEasy

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bro thats sooo cool...i would not be able to keep my self in control if i saw that..i would be yelling in excitement..that is an experience of a lifetime!!
 

farber2028

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Thanks for the congrats! I was looking more inland and Steph was looking on the beach. By the time we saw her she had just gotten on to shore, we didn't see her actually come out of the water. I literally froze when we saw her. Like, "What do we do? Do we go look at her, touch her, or what?" Then my thoughts came back and I've read they sometimes won't come all the way to shore if there's too many lights or what not. She froze too when she saw us, that moment was kind of funny. I was actually surprised at how quick she can get moving on the sand. I think the coolest part outside of actually getting to see her was when she started digging and the amount of sand that was being tossed with each dig. I wish I could of got that on camera but she was already pretty freaked out. She had to be. After she got up on shore we literally ran over to take pictures of her and whatnot. I'm surprised she started nesting at all with us around. But maybe she knew we were ok. Who knows.

Definitely one of the coolest/best things I've ever experienced and I will absolutely remember this for the rest of my life. So awesome!


Oh yeah, does anyone actually know if that's a Hawksbill or not? It was so dark it's hard to actually see the colors and all that. I tried to get one of her face when she was going back to sea but I decided I probably shouldn't be getting in the way of something moving that fast that's that big and probably a few hundred pounds. She had to be 3 feet long and 2 feet wide.
 

farber2028

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I still don't really believe it happened but it was awesome! haha :)
 

TommyZ

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Super cool. Congrats to both of you.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using TortForum mobile app
 

farber2028

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tortoise5643 said:
I might have to take ONE egg to incubate... I know, I'm bad

Funny. I kept saying I wanted to dig for to see if there was eggs but I held back haha.
 

farber2028

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I thought the speckled shell kinda looked like some of the hawksbills on a website I found. It's pretty hard to not take pictures haha. I just think anyone in that situation is going to snap some pics. We didn't disturb her nesting and all the pics we took were of her making her way to nest and back to the sea all within like a two minute time span.


I don't think her shell was serrated though. I'm still confused as to what she was haha
 
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