In the past years, there were have been a few “turtle releases” done by the local turtle farm. However, due to hurricanes and also low fertility of their turtle population, none had been done in the past two years.
A few weeks ago, such an event was planned on seven mile beach. I of course attended. 🙂 Ten 1-year old turtles were released by members of the public. Approximately 200+ people showed up for the event. I managed to get “front row seats”.
Here are some pictures of the event. The first one will give you an idea of the crowd that gathered. May be more than 200. In any case, someone driving by must have thought that some rock star was giving a free concert! 🙂
Here go two of them.
This one made it to the water. The “carriers” would put the turtles down on the sand and let them make it into the water themselves.
This one swam very close to me.
Swimming away to freedom! As you can see, there were even people in the water hoping to catch a glimpse of these lovely animals.
As a note, turtles are protected in Cayman. It is illegal to catch/kill any. Those that are caught face jail time. When I go diving, I often see turtles swimming around, so I think that although the population is not huge, it does seem to be doing well.
Final note: One one day of hurricane season remaining. 0 storms this year, not even a near-miss. IDA was the closest and was never a threat.
