Saving the turtles

When we were younger we used to go Ascension Island on holiday all the time. I can’t even remember how many times we went, but it was a lot. I don’t think I’ll ever get to go again, which is so depressing, it was my favourite place in the world, but you can only really go there if you had a family member (like my dad) in the RAF, and even then it’s pretty tricky. Nowadays, if it’s even possible to just go on holiday as civilians, it would cost ridiculous amounts. 

But it was a tiny little island in the middle of the Pacific somewhere in the middle of England and the Falkland Islands (going there is a whole new story...). Hardly anyone lived there. My favourite memory of Ascension Island has to be the Green turtles. They were absolutely enormous – I’d never seen anything like them, and came there to lay their eggs and then go swim away again. In the early hours of the morning, at the right time of the year, we would sit on the beach with only the moon to help us see, and watch them come from the shore right onto the beach and dig a hole in the sand to lay their eggs. It was amazing to watch. 

One day when we were on the same beach where we’d watched the turtles before, my little brother shouted us over and caught in some fishing cage under the sand were tiny little turtles, smaller than your hand, which had just hatched. Somehow they knew they were meant to be heading for the sea, but even if they got themselves out of the cage they would have no chance. There were hundreds of sea birds flying around waiting for newly hatched turtles. So (right heroes we are) we got them out and put them in buckets – there were enough to fill at least three – and put them in the car to go to a beach where they’d have more of a chance; Comfortless Cove. We put them on the sand, and watched them get to the water (they floated when they swam, it was freaky looking) and swam out with them as far as we could go, trying to scare away the trigger fish who were as bitchy as the birds. One of my older brothers saved them from a shoal of trigger fish when a tissue in his pocket fell out in the water and distracted the fish that split it into pieces whilst our little turtles made an escape. 

I somehow doubt many of them survived, but definitely more than they would have on that other beach. So we felt pretty awesome.