Turtles

Early today I visited the Big Barge. This was a boat built in 1970 under the auspices of John Clunies-Ross, and used to go to North Keeling island and beyond. Unfortunately, it sank in the 1990s. It was recovered some time recently, and the Shire and Commonwealth government put in funds to enable it to be restored. It’s now an art gallery and cafe. 

 

The lagoon at Cocos (Keeling) Islands is estimated to have over 30,000 turtles living in it. About half of them are critically endangered hawksbill turtles (their shells used to be made into tortoiseshell items, and they were nearly hunted to extinction), and half are green turtles. When turtles nest, they go back to where they were born, and most of these turtles don’t nest here. But when they have tracked the turtles in this lagoon, a surprising number live here most of the time.

Today I went on a turtle tour, where we puttered around in a part of the lagoon very close to West Island spotting turtles and other marine life. I guess we saw about 100 hawksbill turtles and about 15 green turtles. Hawksbill turtles are extremely fast. As soon as they put their heads up and see a canoe anywhere nearby they stop resembling a rock, and change into rocket mode and disappear very quickly. So I had a hard time getting any pictures. However, this was the best I did.

 

We were in about a maximum of half a metre of water, so it was quite shallow, and you could see the sea grass and sponges they were feeding on. 

Turtles weren’t the only thing we saw. Both mullet and bone fish leap in the air repeatedly. At one stage a group of about twenty mullet came straight for us, and we were both sure they’d end up leaping into the boat - but they didn’t. One of the attractions of Cocos (Keeling) Islands is that there are bone fish here - they’re evidently very difficult to catch and people come here from all over the world to try (you don’t eat them as they’re full of bones). We also saw a lot of black tipped reef sharks.

 

It was a beautiful day in great scenery, but I didn’t manage to take photos of the marine life.