Pedra Badejo - Turtles!

Ironically, Bertie and Ian visited this cool little town about a week before I did. They went in an unofficial capacity, and I went officially to see the project. A group in Pedra Badejo, Caretta Caretta, is working to protect the turtles that lay eggs on Cabo Verde's beaches. The loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta), an endangered species, lays eggs in the mid-Atlantic, and Cabo Verde is one of its preferred destinations. Unfortunately, people still eat turtle here, so nesting females are vulnerable to poaching. The NGO we visited organizes watches to protect the females, guard the nests, and help the babies when they hatch. It's a black sand beach, which is good for turtle eggs because black sand is warmer than white sand, making incubation shorter.

Pedra Badejo is a fairly poor place without much of a stand-alone economy. Fishing is big here.

Bertie liked it. He appears to have inherited his mother's ability to radiate heat...

Never travel without a dump truck.

A makeshift soccer goal.

All-terrain Bertie!

Bertie nose-to-nose with a turtle skull!

Reconstructing a turtle.

Hello, is that the ocean?

Turtle nests! The NGO brings them to a dedicated and somewhat protected place to incubate in safety. One of the nests had hatched a baby that morning and was expected to hatch the rest that evening.

Each tag has the date and the number of eggs.

This is the baby turtle born the morning of the visit.

A briny lagoon with lots of birds. The NGO is fighting plastic contamination as well as turtle poaching.

Documenting the documenting.

This bashful little boy had helped save an adult turtle the day before by alerting everybody to the fact that it was caught in a net. He got the fishers who owned the net and the volunteers together to save the turtle and treat its minor injuries. The turtle was released the same day.

Looking across the black sand beach to Maio Island in the distance.