Tending Turtles
Volunteers are helping bring hawksbills back from the brink.
Judy Edwards
Maui marine biologist Cheryl King’s blond hair is so long that it tangles in her legs when she surfs. She sometimes rolls it up in the car window accidentally and gets sand in it too, especially when she sleeps on the beach.
During summer, King sleeps on the beach a lot. From June through November, the stars are her night-light and her world is defined by the sound of her alarm, which goes off every 10 minutes so she can check on turtle nests.
Neither King nor any of her fellow selfless, committed volunteers get much sleep in late summer and fall. They wake up for their nest-watching shifts groggy, sandy, furry-toothed, and stiff, with the salt air damp on their sleeping bags. And they love every minute of it. “I feel responsible for what they experience, in a way,”
King says. “I want them to be stoked.”
It’s hard not to be stoked when you see the promise that’s packaged in a two-ounce hawksbill turtle hatchling. This is not the green sea turtle (honu in Hawaiian) you might see in Hawaiian waters, grazing placidly on limu (seaweed); nor the leatherback, either—that one-ton beastie peacefully snarfing jellyfish in deep water. This sea turtle, the hawksbill (‘ea in Hawaiian, Eretmochelys imbricata in Latin), has fierce black eyes, a beaked head, and a ridged shell that is a little too pretty for its own good.
You’re probably familiar with the tone and coloration of this shell; it’s called “tortoiseshell” and is made into such products as combs, mirror backs, bracelets—so many products, in fact, that the hawksbill has nearly been harvested clean out of the ocean.
Although none of earth’s seven sea turtle species is truly doing well, hawksbills are officially “critically endangered,” meaning we need to move quickly if we want them to survive. Only about 60 hawksbill females are known to nest in Hawai‘i, and most of these lay their leathery, Ping Pong-ball-sized eggs in the black sands of the Big Island. Approximately 10 percent nest here on Maui. That’s maybe seven turtles at best.
During last year’s nesting season, a hawksbill named Orion laid five nests at Makena: four on Big Beach and one on Little Beach. Orion was first identified in 2001, named for the constellation rising over her as she nested. King, on duty as usual and watching in the moonlight, named her at 3 a.m.
Nature poses an arsenal of threats to nests and hatchlings alike. Mongooses are eager to dig up the eggs from an unguarded nest, as are rats, feral dogs and cats. Once the tiny hatchlings emerge, they are vulnerable to these introduced animals, as well as to native ghost crabs and birds.
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Humans, too, contribute to the problem. Vehicles driving on the beach can crush nests. On Maui’s popular beaches, hatchlings can become trapped in a simple human footprint and die there, dehydrating in the rising sun. Also, artificial lighting draws the turtles away from the ocean instead of toward it. Hatchlings have been found crossing North Kïhei Road, headed inland toward electric lights and headlights.
Once they find the sea, of course, hatchlings are on their own. King and the volunteers do everything they can to help up to that point, from guarding nests to shielding hatchlings from the glare of streetlights. It can be exhausting. It can be wonderful.
King originally came to Maui to study whales after graduating from Southampton College in Long Island with a bachelor’s degree in psychobiology (a combined study of marine mammals’ psychology and biology). She’s currently working on a master’s degree in marine biology. King met members of the Hawai’i Wildlife Fund who were watching a green sea turtle nest on a Lahaina beach in August of 2000. Drawn in, she began nest-watching at Kealia (Sugar Beach) later that year.
Orion’s 2001 and 2004 M¯akena nestings produced 1,160 live hatchlings. Their chance of survival maybe as little as one in 10,000. This is an ancient reptile strategy: lay a lot of eggs and hope for the best.
“It’s been a great strategy, made perfect sense for this long,” King points out. “The thing is, times have changed.” This old turtle strategy is losing ground to the above-mentioned human- and nature-induced perils.
Since 2000, King has been at the hub of the hawksbill nest watch program, collaborating with several state and federal agencies. Additionally, the Hawai‘i Wildlife Fund has been working on turtle issues since 1997.
“My plan and dream is to secure long-term funding for this project and expand it,” King says determinedly.
To pay her rent and grocery bills, King also holds down a full-time position with the Kaho‘olawe Island Reserve Commission, which is working to restore that island after decades of the U.S. Navy’s using it as a bombing target. There, she integrates her university research with trying to unlock the puzzle of sea turtle abundance and distribution around the slowly healing island. “It’s a balancing act,” says King of her two commitments, “but I can’t imagine not doing either one of them.”
With state and federal permits through the nonprofit Hawai‘i Wildlife Fund, she runs Maui’s only hawksbill nesting monitoring program, receiving no pay or funding.
Which is crazy when you realize that the hawksbill is the second most endangered sea turtle in the world after the leatherback. Miraculously, this program and King run on pure commitment, a sense of the clock ticking, and the support of passionate volunteers.
“I need more volunteers than ever this season to expand beach-monitoring efforts,” says King. “New nesting beaches could be out there—we need to make sure every hatchling gets to the ocean. Turtles have been on earth for so long that there’s something inherently wrong in their current decline. A photo I show at presentations, of a hatchling flipped over and helpless in a human footprint on the beach, sums it up for me: That feeling, the one of going to the rescue of some small life—maybe the one destined to be the only survivor in 10,000—is what drives me.”
