Torture

That's what the word for turtle sounds like in French. But that is what we saw this past weekend at Pointe Denis (just across the estuaire from Libreville). We hired and guide and we walked quite a ways to see this mama lay her eggs in the sand.

It was definitely worth it though!! She was huge 3-4 ft long and probably 2.5 ft wide! Apparently Gabon has the largest concentration of this kind of turtle in the world. We couldn't take pictures until the very end because they follow light and she did! They had to guide her back to the ocean a couple times.

Gabon’s Species: Leatherbacks

In the Pacific Ocean, leatherbacks have declined by 95% in the last twenty years, so have been classified as critically endangered worldwide. We are lucky that Gabon has the biggest nesting population in the world. Leatherbacks are the largest of the sea turtle species and also the most unique-looking. They have a soft leathery carapace with seven longitudinal ridges and numerous white spots. A large adult can have a carapace of 180 cm in length, a flipper-span of 270 cm and a weight of 500 kg. The biggest recorded leatherback measured 2.91 m and weighed 916 kg!

They feed on jellyfish and other oceanic invertebrates, which they trap in their oesophagus with special spiny structures. Floating plastic bags in the sea can be mistaken for jellyfish and kill leatherbacks who eat them. Leatherbacks can dive for as long as one hour to depths as much as 1000 m! In addition, they are known to feed even in cold Arctic waters, since they are unique among reptiles in their ability to thermoregulate. Several leatherbacks which nested in Gabon and were marked with metal flipper tags were later recaptured in feeding grounds as far away as South America and South Africa.

(After our mama finished her nesting they tagged her with one of these metal tags, and she quickly decided she wanted to go back to the sea!)

Got this info from here: http://www.seaturtle.org/groups/gabon/turtles.html