Last night 31st August 2012, around 7:00 pm while preparing slide for the ‘Marine Fish’ presentation for the daily Awareness Talk, 1 guest come & told me that there is a Turtle coming up beside Pom Pom restaurant. I went to the scene and have a look, yes there is a huge Green Turtle coming up and searching for a place to lay eggs.

After 10 minutes, she starts to heading to our right side of restaurant main entrance. eventhough it was a little bit bright because of the restaurant lights, she still continue her nesting process, we helping to reduce the lights in the restaurant to lessen her light stress.

She found a place for lay eggs!

Around 7:30 pm, she manages to find a suitable place and start to dig the body pit. After finished digging the body pit, she started to the egg chamber. It was amazing, can’t image how she can dig a hole of 65-75 cm deep only using her rear flipper.

Around 8:00 pm, she started to lay her eggs! She was so amazing! She only took 20-25 minutes to lay eggs and started to close the chamber using the rear flipper as well.

She started to lay eggs

We start our job by put a tag on her both front flipper and measure the carapace. She had 97 cm Carapace Width and 96 cm Carapace Long. We tagged an official tag to her with (BJ 0645 left flipper and BJ 0646 right flipper). We were surprise to see her rare right flipper which is we can’t identify the cause of it. (see below picture).

Her right flipper

Officially after we count her eggs before transferred to hatchery, she laid 112 eggs.

This is the first ever happened in Pom Pom Turtle came near the restaurant and successful laid eggs.

We named it ‘MERDEKA’ (in English = Independence) since she came on the 31st August as remembrance of Malaysia Independence Day.

Hope to see MERDEKA in 2 weeks later for the next clutches of eggs.