Turtle Barriers

Green Sea Turtles are strong persistent animals and can get themselves into dangerous situations around the buildings and runway on Tern Island. They crawl up on the beaches, usually during the nighttime hours, to dig their nests and lay eggs. If they leave their nest and crawl into a situation where they are trapped and exposed to the daytime heat they will die. To prevent this, turtle barriers have been built over the years to stop the turtles from getting themselves into dangerous situations. The barriers have been built where turtles are known to escape the beaches and get entrapped. They take many forms and the pictures in this post show most of the types. The turtles move lots of sand so we need to shovel the sand away from the barriers regularly or the turtles will crawl up the ramps of sand they have piled up and crawl over the barriers. ---Notice the height of the sand piles beyond the albatross chick and the wood barrier.---