Malaysia’s Hotel Wildlife Warriors

Five guests are lingering over their dessert. The last spoonfuls of a decadent chocolate cake are slowly picked at while a hot breeze drifts across from the beach. From a beachside, candle-lit dinner at Tanjong Jara Resort, the South China Sea is dark in the distance. Aside from the buzz of a mosquito or two, and the hum of couples at dinner, there’s silence.

Suddenly a phone rings. “It’s turtle time,” calls the hotel manager. “Quickly, quickly, you must hurry.” This is the only time I’ve ever heard a hotel manager rush guests away from dinner. Cake forgotten, we scramble from the table to the lobby, stopping to spray more insect repellent and grab our cameras.

Each year the beaches of Terengganu, on Malaysia’s eastern coast, are the birthplace for hundreds of turtles. And each year Tanjong Jara Resort’s employees volunteer to take guests out to watch giant Green, Hawksbill and Leatherback turtles undertake the arduous task of laying their eggs in the sand.

It’s 10pm by the time we’re in the minibus. By 10.05pm we’re hurtling down the main road. The turtles are on a strict timeline and the delivery doesn’t wait for anyone. Our driver Isis is a valet by day, passionate turtle conservationist by night. There’s no official association between the resort and Terengganu’s turtle sanctuary, but according to Isis the men who spend each night trawling the beach looking for turtle tracks don’t mind a few spectators.

The road to the beach is well lit – at first by fairy lights from roadside bars, then by giant spurts of flame, erupting from the town’s large oil refinery. When we turn off onto a dirt track the sky is a dirty orange, lit up as the balls of flame spurt out.

 

We find our turtle wedged underneath a log in the shrubbery on the edge of the beach. She flicks sand back towards the sea, her giant flippers slowly grinding out a burrow. An old man with a cigarette in his mouth, a headlight strapped to his head and a machete in his hand hacks clear room for her to move. He’s been here for 44 years, back when there were tigers in the jungles and no oil refinery on the beach. The laying season is from early April until August, and he’s here nearly every night.

This is an assisted delivery – once the turtle has laid her eggs, he helps her out of the burrow and back to the water. Once she’s gone, the delicate operation begins. With a long metal rod he gently prods the sand. Elbows deep in the burrow, he locates the eggs and starts scooping them out. One, two, finally 72 ping-pong sized eggs are laid out on the sand. From here they’re reburied in the hatchery – a covered section of sand further up the beach – for protection from the elements and the poachers. At the markets turtle eggs fetch a good price, they’re a local delicacy.

Once the eggs have had time to grow, they’re uncovered and little hatchlings crawl around the sand. The turtles are released during the night – to keep the birds at bay. Almost 160 000 turtles are released but who knows how many will survive.

Tonight we’re lucky to see the full cycle – once the new eggs are buried, we’re lined up along the sand and a fresh batch of hatchlings is released behind us. They follow torch light through our legs, tickling our toes as they clumsily clamber over our feet. They scurry towards the ocean and are swept away.

By the time we’re back in our beds it’s late. Or early. The morning is already beginning but I won’t be sleeping anyway. A turtle hatching beats any kind of hotel facility or planned activity.

If you’d like to see turtle hatchings, head to Malaysia during hatching season, or for somewhere closer to home, Heron Island in the Great Barrier Reef sees thousands of hatchlings each season.

Images by Tanjong Jara Resort, YTL Hotels and Lisa Perkovic.