Hawksbill Turtles, indigenous to Bequia, have existed for the last 100 million years. They are named for their narrow, pointed beak, and have a hard shell made up of overlapping scales. These colourful and patterned shells are quite beautiful, unfortunately making them a highly coveted commodity. The Hawksbills are found mostly in tropical oceans, and can weigh as much as 150 pounds. They feed mainly on coral reef sponges and anemones, which helps to clean the reefs, and they are also fond of jellyfish.
The Hawksbill turtle has been on the endangered species list since the 1970’s. They often ingest marine pollution such as plastic bags and balloons, mistaking them for for jellyfish, and many also drown when accidently netted by commercial fishing activity. Their pretty shells have helped to deplete their numbers too, as for many years they were polished and made into jewelry, or hung from walls as decorations. The loss of nesting and feeding habitats due to mankind is a large factor for their dwindling numbers, as well as egg destruction and/or collection once they have been laid. They are also very tasty, and when I first arrived on Bequia stewed turtle was considered a treat by many.
The turtles mate at sea, then come ashore to lay their eggs during the nesting season. Amazingly enough, the female almost always returns to the same beach on which she herself was born to lay her eggs, often migrating quite some distance to do so. The female digs a hole, lays about 140 eggs and then swims away – her job as a mother doesn’t last long! Several weeks later the hatchlings emerge from the eggs and head straight for the sea, an instinctive start to their lives that is amazing to watch. The tiny babies are on their own, and face many obstacles in their effort to survive. On their way across the beach, they are at the mercy of birds, snakes, crabs and other creatures. They will also mistake the glow of man-made lights for the glow of the moon, and perilously head in the wrong direction. The hatchlings that DO make it to the sea are immediately threatened by hungry sharks and other large fish, and as a result it is estimated that only 1 in 1,000 hatchlings makes it to adulthood. Those are not very good odds!
Brother “Orton” King, a fisherman from Bequia, didn’t think those odds were so great either. One day he came across a group of hatchlings emerging from the sand, and scooped them into a bucket. He vowed then and there to protect them until their chances of survival were better. Brother King’s vow became a bit of an obsession once he realized that his desire to protect the turtles was actually working, and his one bucket grew to several larger buckets as the hatchlings grew. This activity took place at Park, on the eastern side of Bequia, and many helping hands got involved with Brother King’s project.
The end result was a large, sea-water swimming pool to ensure that the turtles had plenty of space. Brother King began gathering hatchlings from other parts of the Island, and needed more pools as well as a roof for shade, and the “Old Hegg” Turtle Sanctuary grew in leaps and bounds. The actual owners of the property were a bit miffed about the construction on their land, but the project was so popular they allowed the building of the sanctuary to continue.
We spent many happy hours as a family cleaning those pools, it was fun as well as educational for the entire Island to watch the turtles grow. Brother King fed them canned tuna for the first several months, then switched to small fish such as fry and sardines as the turtles grew. He constructed a special “hospital” pool with individual sections for those that got sick or injured, realizing it was important to separate them from the those that were healthy.
The day came for the first set of hatchings to be released into the sea, and a large crowd congregated to take part in the event. Brother King drilled a hole in the back end of each turtle’s shell, thereby marking it forever, and one by one they were placed on the beach. Everyone cheered as the turtles scuttled across the sand to reach the sea, it was a special occasion for the turtles as well as for Brother King and the spectators! Over the years well over 2,000 turtles have been released from the Old Hegg Sanctuary, and as they were now large enough to survive their natural habitat I assume they have done just that.
The Sanctuary is still in place at Park, a project started by Brother King in 1995. For years it has served as a tourist attraction, and donations to visit have helped finance the feeding of the thousands of turtles that have occupied it. Mr. King was 57 years old when he scooped that first batch of hatchlings into a bucket, and is certainly not getting any younger! Covid-19 and its effect on tourism has dried up the revenue needed to help finance the sanctuary, and although there are still turtles in the pools, I wonder how much longer Brother King will continue. Over the years there have been negative comments made about the capturing and keeping of the tiny hatchlings, and some of them I’m afraid I agree with. The use of the word “sanctuary” was perhaps a mistake, people associate it with a facility used to heal and then release damaged animals, not to actually captivate them, and Mr. King has taken a lot of heat about it. Catering to the tourist trade had its pitfalls, that’s for sure! However, the fact remains that due to Brother King’s hard work and passion, an estimated fifty out of every hundred turtles have survived, as opposed to one out of every thousand. Those odds are a lot better thanks to a man with a passion to protect an endangered species, and who totally changing his own way of life to do so!
Once in a while I hear that someone has spotted a Hawksbill with the tell-tale hole drilled in its shell, and it never fails to make me smile.
We visited Old Hegg’s sanctuary about 20 years ago when we first sailed to Bequia and still appreciate Brother King for his work. More recently, when Tobago Cays became a national park, they cordoned off the area adjacent to the beach on Baradal as a turtle sanctuary. Dinghies still drive through it unfortunately, but there certainly were a lot of Hawksbill turtles in the Cays the last time we visited.