Please enjoy this HWF Intern Story from our Archive. Ramzi Talbi joined us all the way from Patagonia during the fall of 2010.
Hawaiʻi Wildlife Fund intern, Ramzi Talbi (who joined us all the way from Patagonia) with HWF Executive Director, Hannah Bernard during the summer of 2010. PC: HWF
The Plan
I usually like to meet new people and explore different places on vacation. In the summer of 2010, my plan was to volunteer with an environmental organization in Central America and try to learn to speak Spanish and surf. As a resident and employee of Patagonia, I was excited to learn about our national internship program. It allows resident employees to leave work to volunteer, while still covering my salary and benefits.
To figure out options, I researched non-profit environmental organizations online. Most of the organizations I contacted in Central America charged money to volunteer with them to cover the costs of lodging, meals, and transportation.
Meeting the Hawaiʻi Wildlife Fund team
My plan to go to Central America changed completely, when I got in touch with Hawai’i Wildlife Fund (HWF). Their team replied quickly to my request, and told me that they needed volunteers in the fall (2010) to work on the Hawksbill Sea Turtle recovery Project. They also helped me find a place to rent in the area. I applied for a month internship with HWF and my application got approved by Patagonia internship committee!
Maui is the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands at 727.2 square miles (1883.5 km2) and it is the 17th largest island in the United States. The two major industries on Maui are agriculture and tourism. Unfortunately, agricultural and coastal industrial land use has had an adverse effect on much of Maui’s coastal regions. Many of Maui’s extraordinary coral reefs have been damaged by pollution, runoff, and tourism, it has been reported that large number of animals and plants species are considered endangered in Maui. One of these species is the Hawksbill sea turtle (honuʻea).
The HWF Hawksbill Sea Turtle Recovery project on Maui: Finding Lele
The main goals of the Hawksbill Sea Turtle Recovery project are to research and protect nesting hawksbills and hatchlings and to educate the community about these species. Hawksbill sea turtles are a critically endangered species due to the loss of nesting and feeding habitat, excessive historical egg-collection, fishery-related mortality, pollution, and coastal development. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed this species as critically endangered on the red list beginning in 1970.
Maui resident honuʻea (named Lele) laying her eggs overnight at Kealia Beach on Maui in the fall of 2010. PC: HWF
HWF Executive Director Hannah Bernard met me at the Maui Airport on September 16th, 2010, with warm aloha and a Hawaiian lei. From there, we drove to Kuʻau where I would live for the next month. Hannah told me that they were expecting Lele (she is one of the nesting Hawksbill turtles) to nest on the beach that same night. She also said that it may be my only chance to see sea turtle nesting on the Beach during my stay. I had two options: go home relax after 13 hour travel from New York, or go to see the turtle lay eggs for the first time in my life. I decided to go see Lele.
At 7 pm we met the rest of the HWF volunteers on the Kealia Beach located within the Kealia Pond National Refuge in the Kihei area, and we started patrolling the beach for Lele, I did the first round with the team and when we stopped at the base camp to rest for the next patrol, I crashed and slept until midnight. After midnight, Hannah woke me up to go home. Another group of HWF volunteers took over until 5am without any sign of Lele.
The next night, September 17th, we went to the Kealia Beach again, met with new volunteers at 7 pm and started the first round patrolling. During the patrol, we saw Lele’s tracks on the sand. Hannah got closer to the fences to see if Lele still there, then she came back and told us that Lele was digging in the sand to lay eggs!!
We went to get the rest of the HWF crew, and Cheryl King, the Hawksbill Sea Turtle Recovery Project Coordinator at the time, brought her night vision scope. We were able to watch the whole process from about 40 feet away. Once the turtle was finished digging, she wasted no time in dropping the eggs into the hole. That’s when we got close enough to her to watch with our own eyes. It was amazing to be so close to this amazing process.
Leleʻs clutch of eggs, monitored by the HWF team at Kealia Beach on Maui . PC: HWF
She heaved through this part of the nesting process, obviously pushing the bunches of eggs out with urgency. But the most impressive part of the nesting process was yet to occur. After she had laid the eggs, the turtle began creating a false nest site as a way of covering her tracks. This seemed like the longest stage of the nesting process. By the time she was finished, she had made a huge crater well away from the actual nesting site, and she turned and headed quickly for the shoreline. Moving across the sand, into the water. The process took about 2 hours.
After 18 days we started patrolling the beach again for Lele, hoping for one more nest (nesting turtles can nest up till 5 times each season). We patrolled the beach for 7 nights without any additional sightings of Lele. It was the end of her nesting season.
I was so honored to be a part of the Hawaiʻi Wildlife Fund team for this incredible experience and will never forget my time with spent protecting the beautiful honuʻea, Lele.
