If you look carefully you will see that I am holding baby turtles, hatchlings, and they are moments from being released into the sea.

This is on "turtle Island" where I had just spent all night up on the beach watching a HUGE turtle scoot up at 1 a.m. to find a safe place to lay her eggs.

She dug a hole and proceeded to go into a trance state and layed exactly 98 ping pong-looking eggs. Then she buried them and went off to sea. The amazing thing about this mother is that she will never see them again, but they will come back to the same place to lay eggs if they make it to her age. Some turtles have to wait 50 years before they mate and lay eggs! (And I thought I was becoming an old maid!)

Out of 98 eggs only a few will survive, which is why she lays so many!

The eggs stay for about 90 days in the sand and then, if they have not been eaten by predators, they hatch and crawl to the ocean, already having all the instincts to survive on their own. No mother, father or siblings teaching them a thing — pretty independent creatures.

These little ones I am holding have been kept safe by the program on the island, and they just hatched hours before, so they must be released into the ocean, where they belong. I watched them crawl into the ocean, their tiny heads bobbing up and down, and somehow they knew exactly what to do. Some of us humans take years to come out of our shell!

See Turtles Take to the Water »

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