And now for something completely different! Heros and villians.

For more than 2 years I have been contributing back page articles to this magazine and I have also completed a couple of online courses with them.

My biggest Wildlife Campus achievement to date?

Probably the fact that I started a course with them about 20 years ago…and I have yet to complete it!

That being said, I have never missed the monthly deadline for my articles.

This article first appeared in The Wildlife Campus magazine in  April 2021.

On a recent visit to a beach lodge, a change of scenery for me, I was hoping to find turtle hatchlings as it was the season…or so I was told.

I arrived just ahead of an impending cyclone as well as a cold front moving up from the Atlantic seaboard, the weather was certainly not conducive to finding tiny turtles scurrying towards the sea.

Turtle hatching season along the Eastern coast of South Africa is always a time of plenty if you are a Pink Ghost crab.

That did not stop the vast hordes of Pink Ghost crabs from taking up residence on the beach, ahead of the possibility of a free lunch. However, as we all know, even in the animal kingdom, there is no such thing as a free lunch as the crabs were about to discover.

That is not to say I did not try. On several evenings I set out with a guide to try to find the aforementioned hatchlings, only to be turned back by driving rain and unexpected winds. Although the guides were willing to continue, I was not given the fact that trying to photograph in a downpour was not an easy task.

If the turtles were meant to be the heroes of this story, then there would have to be villains to act as a counterpoint.

Instead of a Disney movie as a template, let us use boxing as the analogy for this tale…

In the Blue corner, weighing in at 226gm, we have many turtle hatchlings who have to try to reach the safety of the ocean and in the Red corner just making the weight limit of 15-71 gm, are hordes of Pink Ghost crabs just longing for an easy meal.

It is a relatively one-sided affair with the crabs not only outnumbering the hatchlings but bearing a far more deadly arsenal that can both hold and consume the hatchlings at the same time.

Meanwhile, the crabs were busy in preparation for their potential evening feast.

They can be found scuttling along the shoreline in the early morning, darting around looking for scraps to eat amongst the flotsam and jetsam that washes up on the beach overnight. During the heat of the day, they dig themselves deep into the wet sand where they can stay cool as well as keep themselves safe from gulls and other seabirds that might see THEM as an easy meal.

As the shadows lengthen and the day cools down, they reappear to take up an offensive line along the breaking waves. However, not all of the crabs were prepared to wait for a delivery service to bring their meal to them and they scuttled off into the plant life to seek out hatchlings for themselves.

Little do these young turtles know that if the crabs don’t get them sea birds probably will and if they safely negotiate those dangers there are fish just waiting for them in the surf. The survival rate is roughly 1 in 1100, hence, much like Impala, they emerge in numbers hoping that the law of averages will prevail and at least a small percentage WILL survive to adulthood.

These tiny turtles only take their first breath once they have broken out of their shells and through the sand that covers them. Exhausted from all the exertion, they then have to navigate several meters to the presumed safety of the sea.

Unlike most animals, they are born orphans and have neither parent to show them how to survive. They have to rely purely on instinct and their environment. It is a sad statistic that only 1 in 1000 survives to adulthood.

Did you know that Leatherback turtle(Dermochelys coriacea) hatchlings are…

around 5-8cm at birth and weigh approximately 226gm.

Born to fail? Only 1 in 1100 will make it to adulthood.

Sexually mature at 20-30 years.

They are born orphans and have to rely on instinct and their environment to survive.

Dermochelys is Greek and means Derma: is skin or leather and Chelyfos is a shell while Coriacea is Latin and means soft/pliable.

As it turned out, this was the only hatchling that I got to see. It seems that more than 30 made a dash for the ocean while I was having dinner, and this little fellow was the last to survive the journey to the ocean.

This was the second trip to this lodge to try and see the turtles in action and both were a failure due to inclement weather conditions.

That being said, it makes me keen to return next season to try to make the turtles the star of the story.

On guard. Even though it seemed that all the hatchlings on the stretch in front of the lodge I was staying at had left, the beach was still filled with crabs waiting patiently to see if there were any stragglers left to pick off.

If you are looking to do an online nature/hospitality course, then this is should be your go-to website. Click on the logo above to visit their website and enroll in the course of your dreams.