Raine Island - Nature's Cradle on the Edge of the Coral Sea
Satellite Web Cast From Turtle Heaven and Hell
Journal Entry - 12- 15 - 02 The Copeman View on the Struggle

We are privileged to have with us on this expedition the man responsible for writing the script for Raine Island - Nature's War Zone. A skilled writer and more importantly a fly fisherman, Clive volunteered to write a piece or two for the web cast. This, his first is particularly poignant. We can look forward to another Copeman journal soon. Also as a professional writer no comparison can be made between his writing and my own. My excuse is as follows: When they really pay me to write, I'll start...

Clive Copeman on The Struggle for Survival
The working title of our film is "Nature's War Zone". In the struggle for life in this place, there are inevitable casualties, and that drama is what we've been sent to capture. Two opposites strike me about what I see. The first is the scale of death here. That is going to be easy to portray. What will be harder is revealing the intimacy of it.

There are many weeks of the nesting season to go, but walk across the sand for just a short distance, and you'll encounter thousands of turtle eggs, exposed by nesting adults. Newer eggs, pecked by gulls, bleed yolk into the sand. Paper thin, mildewed shells rustle in the hot wind.
Bones outnumber eggs. Shoulder blades lie flat on the surface, while the ball joints of femur bones protrude. There's more. The base of the low limestone cliffs are covered by complete skeletons bleaching in the sun. Booby chicks sit upon piles of them in shady crevices. In some places, it seems like the bones are a foot deep, and now and then, you come across a still intact carcass, the carapace jammed between rocks, the neck and head drooping, mouth agape, eyes decayed and blackened. The smell hints at the putrefaction inside.

These things are part of the shooting script I came here with. Others aren't.
Our director Jeremy, biologist Ian and I went ashore the other morning to look for fresh carcasses to film, when we found a turtle just a few metres from the water. Exhausted from her night's efforts, she had been caught in the sun. As we approached, she lifted her head, still alive, still breathing. There was a chance of reviving her, although Ian observed that she was already cooking. Grabbing hold of her flippers, we dragged her into the waves and splashed water over her shell. Some of her flipper scales came away in Ian's hand. Every once in a while, there came an intake of breath and a loud hiss from her as we held her head up above the waves.
Then Ian and Jeremy left me to check on a carcass they had seen the night before. I stayed with the turtle, squatting down in the sand, her head in my hands. I could feel her jaw muscles working, but she hadn't blinked in the minutes since we found her, her head was limp, and her eyes were rimed with sand. The waves were small, but one, larger than the others, covered her head momentarily and a few small bubbles rose from her nostrils. As the water cleared her face, I felt the muscles tense again through the thin white leather of her jaw. She drew in a long breath, and let it out with another hiss, her last.
When Ian returned a few minutes later, he checked her eyes with a finger - no response. He opened up her mouth to look at her airway and said "She's lost her glottis. She's gone." As we rode back to the Floreat, I wondered if she had been successful in nesting, and if any of her embryos would survive to adulthood.

Today, after a very hot walk around the island in the middle of the day, we found another distressed turtle near the tower. It was 3:00 p.m., and she had been out in the sun all day, lying on her back at the base of another small drop. She had the strength to flap, so we dragged her to the water. Once she felt the waves, she revived, and stroked away powerfully out over the reef.

Among the millions of bones and desiccated eggs, surrounded by death, I keep thinking about the struggle for existence - here and everywhere; the turtles', the birds' and our own. I think about how precious and wonderful each and every life is. And I'm grateful to have been reminded of that fact.
The team also received an email from a site question about the technology being used to transmit our journals and whether we were shooting motion as well as still pictures.

Q: Is there somewhere I can find out details of how you are transmitting your journal?
Are you taking only still or moving pictures as well?

A: We are using an Apple G4 Titanium Powerbook computer (as modem) & Iridium Satellite telephone handset to transmit the data and images to my webmaster at studioburt.com. The system requires a serial port adapter (the Iridium data transmission kit is serial port setup - Mac is not) and I am using one manufactured by KeySpan. System works very well.

We are shooting digital video as well as still imagery.
Don't forget you can email us questions at
raineexpedition@netcarrier.com
Built on an Apple G4 Titanium Powerbook courtesy of Apple Computers Inc., Connected to the world by Iridium Satellite LLC and Digital eyes courtesy of Nikon - the new D100 digital camera, Captured on LexarMedia digital film.
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Photo Captions:
• Turtle rescue.
• Turtle rescue.
• Turtle rescue.