by Bob Kranich
The Cayman Turtle Schooner, (Part 12, Excerpt 66)
This is a story, titled The Cayman Turtle Schooner. This story will tell about the forming and history of the Cayman Islands, the green sea turtle’s habits and life style, the building of a dugout canoe, and then a schooner, and lastly about the historic two-masted turtle schooner, A. M. Adams. Our two main characters, a green sea turtle and young man are about to get introduced to each other.
The Cayman Turtle Schooner
It is early morning, the first of the month of June, 1856. Long ocean swells are reflecting the light from a huge full circle of the moon. Lying on top of one of those swells is a shape. It is a dark teardrop shape with some reflection from the sheen of water glistening from its top.
This shape will float there for some time and then disappear under with slight splashes from its two front flippers that it uses like paddles. Then it will rise again a little further in. This large female green sea turtle is returning to the same island and the same beach she was born on. It was also the same beach on the same island her mother was born on. She is repeating the eternal life cycle. She has been carrying these eggs the last couple of weeks, and it is time to bring them to this beach.
Her destination is the middle island in the Cayman Chain, Cayman Brac. She floats in on a swell that suddenly turns into a huge breaker. It pushes her up on a smooth sandy beach, and she momentarily pauses as the water rushes back to its source, pulling hard against her. The water attempts to force, but can’t budge the two hundred and fifty pound, three and one half foot long turtle lying in the fast firming up sand. As the water returns to the sea, she continues on with her mission.
Moving ever so slowly, the turtle literally inches herself along, pulling with her front and rear flippers and moving from six to twelve inches at each pull. Moving up the beach, her goal is the sand above the high tide line. When she arrives at a place that is to her liking, she digs a body hole by rotating her body as she moves sand with the four flippers.
This is very near the exact location where she herself was born. Next with her rear flippers she excavates another hole about twelve inches deep down in the original body hole.
Between seventy-five and one hundred and eighty eggs are laid. These eggs are round, soft, and white. Because they are soft they don’t break as they drop out. Then the sea turtle uses her rear flippers to cover the eggs. Finally she packs the sand down over the eggs and fills the large body hole. A throwing of sand all over camouflages the nest. This all takes about one to two hours to complete. Then she begins the reach-pull, reach-pull, slow process of returning to the sea.
Her eggs are now going to lie there and incubate about sixty days. They will make it to hatching if predators don’t discover them. Another factor is also at work. If the sand becomes very hot the nest will produce more females than males.
For our story we are particularly interested in one egg. It came out first. It fell the farthest. On the bottom it is the coolest. This egg is going to be a male. The sixty days are completed and all over and above this egg the other turtles are breaking their shells and digging towards the surface.
Crack! The egg breaks open. A male turtle’s head pops out, then two flippers. It is dark and sandy. The turtles above him have loosened the sand, and he has an easier time than the ones that have gone ahead. For some reason they all wait until it is night. It has taken them a day to get ready. The cool air above lets them know that it is night, and suddenly these hatchlings burst forth from the nest. They take a few seconds to get their instinctive bearings, and then head towards the brightest horizon, which is naturally the sea.
This is a very dangerous time in a green sea turtle’s life. Predators abound: seagulls, crabs, foxes and raccoons, then once in the sea, more birds and fish. Only about five percent make it to the water and swim out to be relatively safe.
“Hey, where did everyone go?” this special turtle says to himself as he climbs out of the nest hole.
He looks around. He sees the lighter horizon and a few small dark shapes disappearing in the waves on the beach.
“Hey, wait for me!” His little flippers take off, churning up the sand.
There is a faint light just barely illuminating the horizon. Birds are starting to fly about. The turtle is halfway across the beach. Suddenly a flap of wings is heard above him and a faint shadow drops down covering him up.
“Get! Go bird!” A young boy reaches down and picks him up by his shell. His four flippers continue to move about.
“I’ve got me a baby sea turtle!” Parker says out loud.
He then picks up his long stout walking stick in one hand and the little turtle in the other and hurries up the beach, back the way he had come. Parker was a trim, heavily tanned boy of fourteen years with a mop of black-brown hair. Heritage wise he was a mix of the seafaring peoples who have been arriving on the Cayman Islands for centuries. Parker was composed of Spanish, French, and English pirates, privateers, military people, and African islanders.
Parker sprinted down the beach a short distance. He then left the beach. Just over the dunes past some coconut palms was his house. It was made of palmetto logs, mud bricks, and a mix of sawed cedar and mahogany wood. There was an abundance of these materials on the interior of this island.
“Grandfather! Grandfather! Look what I have!”
“Did you find some large turtles, Parker?”
“No Sir, look!”
“Why, it’s a baby turtle. It isn’t a mouthful!” Parker’s Grandfather stated.
“No, we’re not going to eat it. I would like to keep it for a pet.”
The baby turtle’s little flappers were still going, flailing about.
“Look, Mother,” Grandfather said as he pointed at Parker. “I sent him out to find and turn over a large turtle to sell or eat, and he comes home with this!”
“My, my, what should I make of this?” Grandmother said sympathetically.
“Well, Parker, you had better get him in some seawater. Go fetch that big bait tub from the shed, and fill it with seawater and seaweed,” Grandfather instructed. “He is so little he needs to be in the water, and he will eat that seaweed we’ve got floating in the lagoon. Also, bring a coral rock to put in there to give him some land.”
“There, Grandpa, I’ve done what you said. But why is he just floating in the center of that seaweed?”
“Well, Sonny, that is what they usually do anyways. If you hadn’t picked him up, and he had made it to the ocean he would have swum out a ways until he found some of this seaweed. You know the first couple of days are the most dangerous for a green sea turtle. They have to get off the beach and into the water before the birds and critters get them. You know that most of ‘em don’t make it!”
“Grandpa, if he is a green sea turtle, why isn’t he green?”
“Well, Parker, first of all he is young, a baby. What you see is his baby coloring. But when he gets big he will be all kinds of colors: brown, yellow, white, and blue-green. But he is called a green sea turtle from the color of the fat beneath his shell. Some think it is from all the sea grass he eats. As he grows up, let’s watch his markings on his shell. No two are alike.”
The Cayman Turtle Schooner, (Part 12, Excerpt 66)
This is a story, titled The Cayman Turtle Schooner. This story will tell about the forming and history of the Cayman Islands, the green sea turtle’s habits and life style, the building of a dugout canoe, and then a schooner, and lastly about the historic two-masted turtle schooner, A. M. Adams. Our two main characters, a green sea turtle and young man are about to get introduced to each other.
The Cayman Turtle Schooner
It is early morning, the first of the month of June, 1856. Long ocean swells are reflecting the light from a huge full circle of the moon. Lying on top of one of those swells is a shape. It is a dark teardrop shape with some reflection from the sheen of water glistening from its top.
This shape will float there for some time and then disappear under with slight splashes from its two front flippers that it uses like paddles. Then it will rise again a little further in. This large female green sea turtle is returning to the same island and the same beach she was born on. It was also the same beach on the same island her mother was born on. She is repeating the eternal life cycle. She has been carrying these eggs the last couple of weeks, and it is time to bring them to this beach.
Her destination is the middle island in the Cayman Chain, Cayman Brac. She floats in on a swell that suddenly turns into a huge breaker. It pushes her up on a smooth sandy beach, and she momentarily pauses as the water rushes back to its source, pulling hard against her. The water attempts to force, but can’t budge the two hundred and fifty pound, three and one half foot long turtle lying in the fast firming up sand. As the water returns to the sea, she continues on with her mission.
Moving ever so slowly, the turtle literally inches herself along, pulling with her front and rear flippers and moving from six to twelve inches at each pull. Moving up the beach, her goal is the sand above the high tide line. When she arrives at a place that is to her liking, she digs a body hole by rotating her body as she moves sand with the four flippers.
This is very near the exact location where she herself was born. Next with her rear flippers she excavates another hole about twelve inches deep down in the original body hole.
Between seventy-five and one hundred and eighty eggs are laid. These eggs are round, soft, and white. Because they are soft they don’t break as they drop out. Then the sea turtle uses her rear flippers to cover the eggs. Finally she packs the sand down over the eggs and fills the large body hole. A throwing of sand all over camouflages the nest. This all takes about one to two hours to complete. Then she begins the reach-pull, reach-pull, slow process of returning to the sea.
Her eggs are now going to lie there and incubate about sixty days. They will make it to hatching if predators don’t discover them. Another factor is also at work. If the sand becomes very hot the nest will produce more females than males.
For our story we are particularly interested in one egg. It came out first. It fell the farthest. On the bottom it is the coolest. This egg is going to be a male. The sixty days are completed and all over and above this egg the other turtles are breaking their shells and digging towards the surface.
Crack! The egg breaks open. A male turtle’s head pops out, then two flippers. It is dark and sandy. The turtles above him have loosened the sand, and he has an easier time than the ones that have gone ahead. For some reason they all wait until it is night. It has taken them a day to get ready. The cool air above lets them know that it is night, and suddenly these hatchlings burst forth from the nest. They take a few seconds to get their instinctive bearings, and then head towards the brightest horizon, which is naturally the sea.
This is a very dangerous time in a green sea turtle’s life. Predators abound: seagulls, crabs, foxes and raccoons, then once in the sea, more birds and fish. Only about five percent make it to the water and swim out to be relatively safe.
“Hey, where did everyone go?” this special turtle says to himself as he climbs out of the nest hole.
He looks around. He sees the lighter horizon and a few small dark shapes disappearing in the waves on the beach.
“Hey, wait for me!” His little flippers take off, churning up the sand.
There is a faint light just barely illuminating the horizon. Birds are starting to fly about. The turtle is halfway across the beach. Suddenly a flap of wings is heard above him and a faint shadow drops down covering him up.
“Get! Go bird!” A young boy reaches down and picks him up by his shell. His four flippers continue to move about.
“I’ve got me a baby sea turtle!” Parker says out loud.
He then picks up his long stout walking stick in one hand and the little turtle in the other and hurries up the beach, back the way he had come. Parker was a trim, heavily tanned boy of fourteen years with a mop of black-brown hair. Heritage wise he was a mix of the seafaring peoples who have been arriving on the Cayman Islands for centuries. Parker was composed of Spanish, French, and English pirates, privateers, military people, and African islanders.
Parker sprinted down the beach a short distance. He then left the beach. Just over the dunes past some coconut palms was his house. It was made of palmetto logs, mud bricks, and a mix of sawed cedar and mahogany wood. There was an abundance of these materials on the interior of this island.
“Grandfather! Grandfather! Look what I have!”
“Did you find some large turtles, Parker?”
“No Sir, look!”
“Why, it’s a baby turtle. It isn’t a mouthful!” Parker’s Grandfather stated.
“No, we’re not going to eat it. I would like to keep it for a pet.”
The baby turtle’s little flappers were still going, flailing about.
“Look, Mother,” Grandfather said as he pointed at Parker. “I sent him out to find and turn over a large turtle to sell or eat, and he comes home with this!”
“My, my, what should I make of this?” Grandmother said sympathetically.
“Well, Parker, you had better get him in some seawater. Go fetch that big bait tub from the shed, and fill it with seawater and seaweed,” Grandfather instructed. “He is so little he needs to be in the water, and he will eat that seaweed we’ve got floating in the lagoon. Also, bring a coral rock to put in there to give him some land.”
“There, Grandpa, I’ve done what you said. But why is he just floating in the center of that seaweed?”
“Well, Sonny, that is what they usually do anyways. If you hadn’t picked him up, and he had made it to the ocean he would have swum out a ways until he found some of this seaweed. You know the first couple of days are the most dangerous for a green sea turtle. They have to get off the beach and into the water before the birds and critters get them. You know that most of ‘em don’t make it!”
“Grandpa, if he is a green sea turtle, why isn’t he green?”
“Well, Parker, first of all he is young, a baby. What you see is his baby coloring. But when he gets big he will be all kinds of colors: brown, yellow, white, and blue-green. But he is called a green sea turtle from the color of the fat beneath his shell. Some think it is from all the sea grass he eats. As he grows up, let’s watch his markings on his shell. No two are alike.”
From The Author:
My second full-length book , Florida Keys’ Watercolor Kapers is composed of 336 pages. There are 12 stories running from 6 pages to as many as 72 pages. It is fully illustrated with 88 watercolors and sketches. The watercolors I made roaming around Key West after I finished my 750 mile hike from Georgia to Key West. (See book or Don Browne’s SouthWest Florida Online News records, A Walk Across Florida.) As you read these stories you will experience Key West, the Keys, and the Caribbean. These stories span the time of the early 1800’s to 1969. bkranich.wixsite.com/bobkranich
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