Green Turtle

Borneo is the world's third largest island, after Greenland and New Guinea. Slice Borneo in half and chances are you'll see the equator bisecting this island twice the size of Germany. There is no better or worse time to visit Borneo; equatorial climates mean year-round rain which rarely lasts long. Our family arrived in Borneo this week, after our daughter's examination.  

We first stopped at Selingan Island in Sandakan Archipelago, where sea turtle conservation has been underway for many years. Watching gravid turtle coming ashore to lay eggs is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Sea turtle nests are called clutches, and a female may dig several of them in the sand in one nesting season. A clutch may contain between 50 and 200 eggs. The eggs are buried deep in the sand for about sixty days. When the young turtle hatchlings break out of its eggs, they must make a race to the water. They don't have GPS; many a time they follow the moon's reflection on the water for guide. If they don't make it, they die.

For every one thousand hatchlings, about one will survive to adulthood. Hear me out: one in one thousand. That's even more difficult than securing the Research Grant Council funding after research grant application. 

As part of the efforts to save the endangered sea turtles from predators, the rangers at Selingan Island patrol the beach every night and transfer the eggs to the hatchery. They also release the new hatchlings on the beach.

Our family were lucky enough to have facetime with three green turtle hatchlings burrowing up through the sand and scuttling down the beach before sunset. These three brave young turtles aren't those collected by rangers; they are from naturally hatchling eggs. We saw three up close, small and fragile. The fourth one didn't make it to the sea; it was swallowed by a hungry water monitor lizard. In the field of harsh and competitive academia, these three young hatchlings are early-career researchers with neither senior support nor RGC track record. I don't know if I should quote the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg who advised "Follow your inner moonlight. Don't hide the madness." I simply know we had wished all hatchlings good luck.