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Saturday, October 10, 2009

Very Sad News For Latest Hawksbill Hatchlings - Please Help!


I met Glynnis at the site this morning, and we picked up more dead hatchlings (and there are still a few left that I couldn't scrape off the road between cars racing by). There were probably nearly 100 killed. This is an unknown nest to us, as tracks were never reported, and looking at the calendar it seems to have been laid before the first Kealia nest was found. It's on a narrower section of the beach, so high tides could've erased the tracks.

We put up a black cloth fence behind the nest site, held down with rocks so no more can make it through onto the road again. I'm heading back there now with my wonderful volunteers to make sure this doesn't happen again. We'll set up vigil tomorrow during the day as well, so if anyone wants to turtle sit the nest please give me a call. We're also awaiting the first nest (that we did know about) to hatch, as tonight is night #65. It's night #56 for the second nest so we'll be keeping a close eye on that one too. Busy, busy!
Please, please, please, call Skippy, Glynnis, and myself right away(!!!) when something like this is found!
Mahalo,
~Cheryl

Original Note...
We had an unfortunate emergence this morning, probably somewhere after 6 AM at Kealia. Unfortunate because many of the hatchlings turned toward the road and didn't make it. XXXXXX was walking the beach, but unfortunately had her dogs, without a leash, and couldn't do much to help. Great that she was there and called me and I was able to run right up there. There was a Highway Cleanup crew working and I solicited them over to help. We carefully checked the area and found 16 hatchlings in the brush and weeds that we moved to the open sand to run to the water. XXXXX arrived and we searched the area for another hour only finding one more hatchling.

1 comment:

kainoa.l.gonsalves@hawaii.gov said...

Today 10-13-09 our Division received a call from a community member in Kihei , Mercedes Obergon she and a friend were running on the morning the incindent with our little keiki hawksbill happened she had told me that after seeing the mass amount of babies they sprung into action and managed to save 5 babies ! How exciting... They went searching for more babies but were unable to locate any so they took the five baby honu's to the ocean's edge , she described them as actually "knowing" where they were and had gotton excited as they were placed on the sand where they then trotted to the ocean as if to know exactly what to do. I thanked her and got her number I think someone may want to contact her and perhaps get more information? but just passing this on to you it takes but just one act of " malama " she and her friend managed to save what we all thought as zero to 5 of these species I think that is something to pass on.

Kainoa Gonsalves
Maui DLNR - Division of Aquatic Resources
Ofc: (808) 243-5178 Fax: (808) 243-5833
Kainoa.L.Gonsalves@hawaii.gov