Gentle Giants: Turtles | Peaceful Wildlife Stories

A baby North American painted turtle. It and the rest of its clutch have only just hatched, but it's late in the year and the chill of winter has already begun. If the hatchlings clambered out of their hole now, they would find nothing to eat, so they stay where they are. The temperature will fall to minus 10 degrees. Ice crystals grow around the babies and even inside their bodies, but their tissues are protected by a kind of antifreeze. This would kill any mammal or bird. They remain in this deep freeze for up to six months, but spring comes at last. The ice melts around them and eventually within them. Slowly, they begin to come to life. It takes quite a time for them to become fully functional, but eventually they're ready to face the outside world. So, by allowing their bodies to cool, they have avoided the hard times. With the arrival of spring, their parents are now preparing to breed again. The male courts the female by gently strumming her cheeks with his long claws. And she responds. Cold blood is clearly no barrier to affection. In fact, reptiles can conduct as complex and as sensitive a courtship as many a mammal. People are now devoting their lives to saving some of the most threatened sea creatures. As here in the Caribbean. Every year, on just a few islands, a remarkable event takes place. As the sun sets, giant reptiles begin to emerge. This magnificent creature preparing to lay her eggs is the largest of all turtles, a leatherback. They can grow up to half a ton in weight and they have an ancestry that goes back 100 million years to the age of the dinosaur. But in recent times, their numbers have fallen catastrophically. Here, however, in the Caribbean, there is hope. Leave the sea in order to lay their eggs in the dry sand. But out of water, these huge creatures are easy targets for hunters. In a small fishing village in Trinidad, Len Peters has experienced this firsthand. I grew up in a household where the presence of turtle meat was normal. The fridge was always full of it. Everybody harvested turtles, including my parents. It's only when I became exposed to things that were being published about leatherback and the birds of extinction and nobody cares, that piqued my interest. Len took the leatherback's future into his own hands. He began patrolling the beach at night to protect the turtles. A brave thing to do. We were met with tremendous resistance. People would pelt us at night. I have had persons insult me, I have had persons curse me, I have had persons physically try to wrestle me with a machete. So it was really a hostile time back then. If Len was going to save these turtles, he needed to win over the whole community. We had to find a way to get the villagers to benefit from the presence of these animals. He began to encourage tourists to visit the beach and train some villagers to be their guides. To help secure the turtles' future, he took the message to the next generation. Now, what's the largest size a leatherback can grow to? Shani? 2,000 pounds. That's correct. Leatherbacks can grow to 2,000 pounds. That's a big turtle. Len's hard work paid off and now attitudes have changed. It took us a while to reach out to the villagers, but gradually we got them involved as well. We got some of the poachers who would be hunting the animals to be part of the conservation program. As well as protecting the adult turtles, the team also collect any eggs that might be flooded at high tide. If the eggs are laid too close to the sea, we relocate the eggs and rebury them. Thanks to the efforts of this community, these turtles have had an extraordinary change in fortune. This is now thought to be one of the densest leatherback nesting beaches in the world. When we started at the height of the nesting season, the numbers would be 30, 40 turtles a night. Now it's over 500. So we have seen an increase from 40 turtles to 500 turtles a night in just around 20 years. Precious new hatchlings are also given a helping hand. Any that emerge during the day are collected to be released safely back to the sea away from hungry birds. This little leatherback will have to face a thousand hazards before it returns as an adult to this beach where it hatched. And those dangers will be greatly increased because of damage that we have done to the ocean. Good luck, little girl. Arguably the most recognisable animal in Galapagos. It even gave the islands their name. Galapago means tortoise in old Spanish. Biologist Steve Blake has been studying the epic journeys these giant tortoises make. Basically tortoises follow where the good food is and the greenness of the vegetation depends on the elevation. So as seasonal swings in rainfall kick in through the Galapagos year, the tortoises follow that sort of pendulum of greenness as it moves up and down the island. But these seasonal migrations have been affected by the arrival of humans. Puerto Ayora, the largest town in Galapagos, was settled in 1925 as a small fishing village. Since then, in the space of just one tortoise generation, the population has exploded to over 12,000 people. Steve wants to discover what impact this is having on the ancient tortoise roots. He's been fitting them with satellite tags to follow their movements. We have about 30-odd tortoises wearing GPS tags on Santa Cruz and those tags, each one records a GPS fix of the tortoise every hour. Steve's tagging reveals the huge distances tortoises travel to find food. Some migrate from sea level to the peaks of volcanoes. But now, Steve's also discovering that the ever-increasing human population here is having a major impact on these well-worn paths. 100 years ago, this giant tortoise behind us was already migrating up and down Galapagos, but in completely natural vegetation. Today, that same tortoise encounters very different conditions up here. Fences, roads and other barriers that potentially block that migration. It's not just the future of giant tortoises that's at stake. These reptiles play a vital role in the whole ecosystem here. They've been called the gardeners of Galapagos. As they plough through the vegetation, they spread seeds and clear plants, creating light and space for new ones. They even stir up insects for birds to eat. Without these migration routes allowing giant tortoises to find the food they need, these islands would look very different. Identifying and mapping these important routes will help to inform future expansion plans. The trick will be how to sustain the migration, give tortoises what they need against the backdrop of development of Galapagos. Bad tortoise. These creatures can float and live without food or fresh water for long periods of time. This isolated atoll is the perfect refuge. Their only enemy is the sun. Without shade, a tortoise risks being boiled in his shell. So after feeding in the cool of the morning and before the sun becomes too crushingly hot, they have to find cover. All of them. There is very little vegetation, but caves in the coral rock can provide the shade they so badly need. This tree could shade a couple of hundred if they pack tight. Shade of some sort if they're to survive. Safe. But the future for Aldabra's tortoises is far from certain. The climate is changing, sea levels are rising, and Aldabra's tortoises may soon have to find a new refuge or drought. There's a definite beeline for that anchor. Suppose it's such a really prominent, prominent feature there in the bottom. Oh my god. What's she doing? Wow, she is. It's feeding on the seaweed on the anchor. That's unbelievable. And one of the really, really interesting elements is that it's so soon after the nesting. I certainly did not expect that. It's the first time ever that we've seen this behaviour. Exquisite. This turtle's going to put me out of a job. Put every underwater camera person out of a job. This is the evidence we were looking for. It proves that these turtles do feed during their five-month breeding season. So this marine ecosystem needs more protection. And that can't come soon enough, based on what she films next. Is that a mesh over? It's like a mesh, a net. Oh man, that's a massive fishy net. That's, that's awful. It does reveal one of the many dangers they are exposed to. Now she's biting the net. She's trying to feed through the net. Imagine if she manages to break this up and then swallows the part. Who knows what's next, whether she chokes on it. This huge abandoned ghost net is a stark reminder of why these waters need safeguarding. Thankfully, our turtle swims off and out into deeper water. And she feeds again, this time on a jelly-like sea squirt. I mean, this is sort of foraging, sort of constantly grazing that she's doing here. You can see, like, pieces loading around. So she's definitely, like, feeding on that. Feeding in this way, is that enough sort of food for her in a day? If she's constantly just browsing her way through the ocean. I want to say no. As you, you know, and you've seen, nesting is really, really energy consuming. So I believe that they top up their reserve right now. Dive and feed complete, she heads towards the surface for a breath. Oh, another turtle. It's a big barnacle on it. Yeah. That's an old one. Look how much stuff she has on the shell. She's biting her. She's biting the carapace. I'm pretty sure that our lure head is chewing off the seaweed and probably the barnacle of the other lure head. It's amazing to see so much life growing on that turtle, but also following the turtle around, this sort of moving ecosystem. Totally. When you actually protect the turtle, you also protect all the ecosystem around them, the fish, the entire habitat. You see, if we did not have the camera, but only a tagging device, like a GPS system, we would never know that that turtle spent so much time at the surface with another turtle. Yeah. Three weeks ago, these mile-wide sandbars didn't exist. In another three months, they'll be back underwater. They provide... They've been coming here precisely at this time of year for generations. 50,000 of them. They're all here. Already claimed nearly every inch of the beach. And there are still many more turtles to come. But being fashionably late... She arrived earlier. Her eggs might have been dug up by those searching. She's found her spot. Settling down, she lays nearly a hundred eggs. Burying them keeps you safe from predators. And the warm sand incubates the clutch. They must hatch before the river rises. Any turtles that lay after her may have left it too late. Two months on, and the hatchlings emerge into the world. They were laid at the perfect time. Hundreds scramble for the river just as the water starts to rise. Those still to hatch aren't so lucky.