Turtle Beach A Turtle Mess

Turtle nest being washed out by Igor's waves (click image to enlarge)

Some have called it Turtle Beach since "The Great House at Turtle Beach" was built in Road View back in the 1980s. However, it has been a prime nesting ground for sea turtles for eons - until the groynes constructed in 2006 at St. Peter's Bay a few hundred yards to the north, and the sea wall constructed last year at the Great House itself decimated it. Only a few yards of sandy beach remain of a stretch that once spanned the area between Mullins Beach and the defunct Kings Beach Hotel.

The turtles have been stressed to the max finding suitable spots to lay their eggs this nesting season as highlighted by a near fatal incident reported here a few weeks ago. Today saw the realization of our worse fears for the nests which were only days from hatching. Persistent waves for the last week kicked up by hurricanes Igor and Julia more than a thousand miles away finally unearthed and washed out several nests in what is now for all intents and purposes Turtle "Cove." As pictured above (click here or see below for more pictures), the 2010 turtle nesting season in Road View is now a disaster.

The hardest part to bear about this catastrophe is that in spite of the despicable groynes and sea wall, this latest incident was still entirely avoidable. As noted on another forum, in the weeks prior to this several calls were made to the Barbados Turtle Project requesting that they come and collect the eggs owing to the fragile nature of the beach. For reasons completely unknown to this blogger they never came and the eggs were never collected. Thanks to the CZMU approved (some may also say "designed") groynes the stretch of "beach" between Mullins Beach and Kings Beach is now useless to both man and beast. For goodness sakes, even if we forget about tourism, what has become of the legislation to protect endangered sea turtles? Is that also a practical joke?



See also: Turtle Butchered

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