Thursday, July 5, 2012

I Like Turtles


Last Saturday night after work, a group of us from Epcot drove out to the Disney Resort in Vero Beach, Florida.

The resort is about an hour and half from Orlando and one of their biggest draws is the fact that hundreds of sea turtles make their way to this beach to lay their eggs.  Each night guests have the chance to sign up for night walks.  During the night walks you have the opportunity to watch the sea turtle come to land, lay their eggs, bury or camouflage them, and then make their way back into ocean.  If you're really lucky you may even get to see one of the nests hatch.  Meaning there would be hundreds of baby sea turtles making their way back into the sea.

Our group got the opportunity to see this happen!

Well not the baby turtles (that would have been even more amazing), but we did get to watch a sea turtle lay her eggs!!

Most of you are probably thinking, "EW! Gross!" 

But actually it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen!  


Here's a breakdown of how the evening went:

When we got to the hotel our first stop was to the restaurant Shutters, where I stuffed my face with this:




Then at 9 o'clock we headed over to meet up with the rest of our group to get some very important turtle egg laying instructions.

During this part, our guide told us that there was a chance we wouldn't see any turtles.
And that the previous night, they spent an hour doing Disney trivia and even had a mini talent show.

Luckily for us, that didn't happen.

After we got through hearing all the dos and don'ts, our guide got the call!

A TURTLE HAD HIT THE BEACH!

Obviously we were all ecstatic.

So we trouped out, single file to the place where the turtle had decided to lay her eggs, waited until we new she was all settled in and then got to go up and watch her lay!

We couldn't take any pictures because it might disturb her while she was doing her thing.
(Which believe me was no easy feat! I was DYING to take a picture.  But I restrained myself)

This picture gives a pretty good idea of what it looked like though.



It was so amazing!
It took her about 40 minutes to lay all 125 eggs (you read right!  Sea turtles will lay between 100 and 125 eggs in one sitting), then we watched her cover the nest and turn around and make her way back to the ocean.  

Our group even decided to sponsor the nest the sea turtle made!  And we'll be able to watch the progression of our babies online.

Our next adventure with the sea turtles will hopefully happen in 60 days, which is when the eggs from our nest will hatch! 





We spent the whole time saying, "I Like Turtles" just like that little zombie kid from that news video that pretty much everyone has seen.  And if you haven't click here and you'll get a special treat. 

Hilarious!

And with that.....I LIKE TURTLES!

Have a great Thursday! 

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1 comment:

Stesha said...

turtles actually freak me out, eeek! but it would be awesome if i got to see a sea turtle lay eggs, maybe just not them hatch! haha Happy weekend!

July 6, 2012 at 1:00 AM

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