Raine Island - Nature's Cradle on the Edge of the Coral Sea
Satellite Web Cast From Turtle Heaven and Hell
Journal Entry - 12- 13 - 02 Hammerheads! Hammerheads?

Another early day. On the island in darkness by five o'clock making my way around the South side watching the night herons silhouetted in the earliest morning glow. They are a very wary, shy bird allowing an approach no closer than one hundred yards unlike many of the other birds on the island.
The night herons line up along dune crest near the nesting turtles, waiting for an adult turtle to disturb a clutch of hatchlings at which point they descend madly with silver gulls and terns in a feeding orgy. It is a beautiful sight to look up the beach and see a hundred of these birds lined up waiting. Now, the reality is that you have to figure out how to photograph the birds without using the Hubbell space telescope which is one of the things I didn't bring with me.
We did find a turtle which had just fallen off a ledge onto its back and was unable to right itself. Sadly, this is an integral part of the saga of the turtles at Raine. There are a few which manage to climb the ledge circling the island. Having completed their nesting activities they then find they are unable to get back off the ledge onto the dunes below and in some cases fall forward either injuring or killing themselves or simply landing on their backs periodically flapping madly while the sun sucks the life out of them. In the case of the turtle we found this morning, we filmed and photographed it and then after having radioed for permission to intercede, we turned the turtle over and made sure it made it back to the water. While it isn't possible to rescue all the turtles which get into trouble and the official policy is not to interfere, some turtles are too high up the beach and too far gone to be saved, the truth is that most visitors to the island make the effort to turn over turtles and help them get back to the water. Interestingly enough hatchlings are very capable of turning themselves over if they end up on their back. This is a function of how long their flippers are in relation to the size of their back. An adult green turtle's carapace (shell) is so bulbous that its front flippers can't touch the ground and therefore the flippers are of no use helping the animal to right itself. In the case of a hatchling, the curvature of the carapace is very shallow and the flippers long so when on its back the hatchling merely digs a flipper into the sand and pulls itself over.
Off the island, we quickly geared up for one more dive before leaving Raine for Lockhart River. Richard shot off for coral gardens again to shoot more super wide angle and fifteen minutes later popped to the surface waving madly - our safety boat raced off to see what had happened. Richard had just spent ten minutes with two ten foot great hammerheads in a courting display. They were circling each other warily as though posturing and positioning before mating. The female had a wide band of lacerations (bite marks) down one flank and on her caudal fins (tail). They had not yet mated because there were not yet any bite marks on the pectoral fins which is how the male grabs to the female to couple. But, as is the case with underwater photography/cienematography, because he had super wide angle fish eye lens the sharks looked as though they were off in the distance even though they were just over a body length away from the camera lens. The video is dramatic for a second but if he had been using the narrower lens it would have been stunning for all if its 10 minutes. I threw on a tank and went in to see if I could find the sharks. They had been right at the surface but by the time we got back up to where the sharks had been, per usual, they were gone. Oh well next time!!
Immediately we were back on the boat we stowed the gear and cleared the back deck and got underway for the 9 hour steam to back through the reef to Lockhart River. At 9:30 we anchored at Loyd Island a few kilometers from the Lockhart River boat ramp. By mid evening on the 14th we'll be off again back out to the East to Raine.
Check back tomorrow. Night!
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Photo Captions:
• Bird prints.
• Her face.
• Digging a body pit.
• On her back.