Last December 7, I went to Bataan with the first and second year high school students. Nope, not for a vacation. (Well I wish it was, but it wasn’t.) On the contrary, it was more like a practical exam on the beach.
Last weekend, we had the yearly field trip to the Pawikan conservation site in Bataan - part of a unique tradition that hedcen started four years ago. Fortunately, I was part of the pioneer group that initiated this extraordinary custom. For the past 4 years, usually during December, freshmen and sophomore students spend 3 days and 2 nights camping on the beach of Morong, Bataan looking for Olive Ridley turtles that climb onto the shore to lay eggs. Students, accompanied by Pawikan volunteers and teachers, go on night patrols to scour the 7-km beach for egg-laying females and/or nests. The goal is to save both the adult females and the eggs from the relentless assault of poachers who, most of which, come from the same fishing villages surrounding the beach.
And for the past four years, I’ve successfully released turtle hatchlings, transferred clutches of eggs, seen abandoned nest sites, but I’ve never seen a female Olive Ridley turtle actually lay eggs. Well, at least not until last December 7.
Finally, after four years, I got a chance to witness the rare opportunity in person. I couldn’t even come up with the right words to describe how elated I was so instead of doing so, I’d just share the pics…
