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Taking Part Saving Sea Turtles by Being a Volunteer in a Turtle Conservation Center
“It didn’t take long for me to feel integrated into my project, it was by the time we released the turtles that I became more aware of my missions”, Robin, INSEEC, Paris, France
My intentions
I have chosen this voluntary work program to support the conservation’s work of protecting and rehabilitating the Bali sea turtles. During my visit to the site with the other volunteers, we learned a lot about the mission and principle of the center. The conservation main function is as an aid and protection center that opens for injured or sick turtles for further medical treatment. The center receives different kinds of injured turtles, from sick turtles that mistakenly consume plastic waste in the ocean, turtles injured over fishing-rod or boat propeller, and so forth. There are also several other natural causes that could cause injuries to these turtles, such as getting bitten by sharks. All these wounded turtles are then being treated by the center until they reach complete recoveries to be released back into the ocean. To track and monitor the sea turtles’ evolution and to ensure their proper development out in the sea, the released turtles are being tagged.
How Turtles Are Protected
The sea turtle eggs are being collected from the beach by mostly locals who live nearby, during the monitoring visit of the team. The eggs rescue is done regularly to protect them from irresponsible humans or animal aggression (predators, such as dogs, snakes and so on). The eggs will then be carried and planted in the hatchery station in the turtle conservation site, in order to facilitate and maximize the baby turtles hatching and survival rates. After it hatches, the baby turtles are kept for at least 1 week to be fed before being released back into the sea through several processes.
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Conserving Turtles for the Next Generations
One of the conservation center's biggest highlights is education, the center takes an active role to introduce and educate the importance of conserving the ocean and the marine ecosystem including its living organism. The conservation center cooperates with a number of schools in Bali, mainly kindergarten and primary school, to invite the students to come and visit the site to learn more about turtles and the different dangers they are exposed to. The visits are free and therefore accessible to all, of course, some or little donations to support the site’s agenda and staff is welcome! Diagrams that show the life cycle, different species, and types of threats turtles face are displayed throughout the center, to help visitors learn and visualize what issues the sea turtles are facing.
What The Volunteers Do
Volunteers were assigned to several missions to do in the center on a daily basis, such as: cleaning the turtle tanks, turtle and tortoise feeding, assisting on baby turtles hatch, releasing them into the sea, participating in the monitoring work, and one of the most crucial parts of all, is guiding visitors to hopefully get them properly informed and raise their awareness on how important turtles’ role is for the marine ecosystem. Since they contribute to the proper development of corals by eating mosses that grow on coral or jellyfish that are too abundant in the oceans.
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