Myself and Dave and several of his co workers and friends traveled to Fuwait beach which is on the Northern coast of Qatar today in the hopes of observing sea turtles laying their eggs. We choose tonight for our adventure as it would be a full moon which would give us optiminal viewing for this event. After the sun set and the moon rose we hiked down the beach which had been sealed off just for the purpose of protecting the nesting sites. The Ministry of the Environment (MOE) is keeping a careful eye on this stretch of land and patrol it thoughout the night. We later learned that at the height of the egg laying season,May to June, there would be as many as 6 turtles comming ashore in a given evening. On our walk down the beach we came to a place where the MOE staff had parked their jeep. Further along we saw a turtle tracks in the sand which indicated that a turtle had indeed landed here. The staff of the MOE asked us to not procede any further so as to allow her some peace and privacy. There followed a bit of confusion until the mother turtle was finally located digging a nest right under the MOE's jeep! There was more watching and then the MOE staff carefully backed up their jeep to reveal the mother turtle. The MOE folks sent the jeep back for more equiptment as the staff on site restrained the turtle. Then, using a common everyday screwdriver they pried off a heck of a lot of barnacles off the mother turtles shell and neck. When the jeep returned the MOE staff did some measurerments and the "tagged" her. After all this she was released into the sea. Her departure was amazingly swift. Dave and I then followed the marks that she had made in the sand and retraced her path and we saw that she had started to build 2 nests before ending up under the MOE's jeep. In this encounter she did not lay her eggs. The MOE's staff told us that she would try again in a couple of days so this was just a dry run for her.
