Rachel's Blog from Japan

The Island of Shikoku                                                            June 3, 2005

Our next adventure involved a car trip to the island of Shikoku.  It is one of the larger islands in Japan, is located to the east of Kobe and has some of the country’s larger national forests.  This trip was varied, with a little something for everyone.  I had read that a few of the beaches on the island were famous for attracting nesting loggerhead turtles.  There is even a small museum, partially sponsored by NMFS and other international entities, in a tiny town, Hiwasa, on the west coast.

Fantasizing about seeing turtles nesting in the wild, we headed to Hiwasa, visited the museum, and found ourselves a ratty hotel on the beach.  That evening, while winding down in our room, we were surprised by a loud-speaker from outside.  Given that we could not understand what it was saying and Japan is renowned for political rhetoric spouting from vehicle loud-speakers, we ignored it.  Then the room phone rang three times with no one on the other end.  Finally, a hotel reception staff banged on the door, waving a brochure about a turtle, speaking rapidly, and beckoned us to follow.  We were able to catch something about tomago (eggs), so we knew that he wasn’t telling us that the building was on fire.

He lead us down the dark street where a small crowd had gathered, and as we peered off into the darkness of the beach, I wondered what we were supposed to be seeing.  Finally, we were allowed to enter the beach and we blindly followed the group to a single light on the beach.  There, in a simple enclosure was a loggerhead turtle that had dug her nest and was proceeding to deposit her golf-ball sized eggs.  She was about 84 centimeters long and 64 centimeters wide.  While we watched for over an hour, she kept dropping eggs.  Apparently, they can lay between 100 – 150 eggs in a hole that can range from 20 – 40 centimeter deep.  The turtle biologist who had made the measurements, was answering questions and keeping people from petting the turtle.  People kept streaming onto the beach, having been alerted by the loud-speaker car that kept driving through town. 

This was quite an event.  Young and old alike were watching in quiet awe.  There is a huge respect for turtles in this town.  It is even captured by the local temple which has gold-covered turtles at the base of its turrets. The next morning we saw that two turtles had made their way up the beach to nest.  Having had no expectations about experiencing this, this definitely was a huge highlight.