Swimming with Million years old species!
A once in a lifetime experience swimming with Loggerhead Sea Turtle in the Mediterranean sea
I was a volunteer to help rescue and protect sea turtles and there I was, sitting on an anchored boat in the shallow waters of the Iztuzu beach in Turkey, with the dark blue waters and green mountains that surrounded it. This beauty seemed to cast a spell of eternal satisfaction and a general feeling of happiness on to me.
Casually glancing around I spotted something in the water. My eyes instantly stopped moving, motionless, and focused. It was a perfectly circular blackish shadow. I had seen innumerable such shadows before in the water and all of them, to my disappointment had turned out to be rocks underneath the water. ”It’s just another rock” I thought to myself and glanced away. But little did I know that this was going to be different.
Coincidentally my gut felt otherwise. This forced me to look again after a few moments and surprisingly enough the rock wasn’t there. It had moved. “This is no damn rock”. My heart skipped a beat, could it be a Turtle? The Iztuzu beach is also famously known as the Turtle beach for each year during the summer more than a 300 Loggerhead Sea Turtles come on to the beach during the night to lay eggs. This beach has been their breeding grounds for decades but only a handful people have seen it during the day as often times the turtles raise their heads out of the water to take a breath. Was I going to join this exclusive club of turtle spotters?
I observed it for a few more seconds and it seemed to just glide through the water, so calm and peaceful while also appearing as a big black rock. For now I was certain that it was indeed a turtle. I couldn’t hold the excitement in any longer. I got my scuba glasses on and dived into the water. And a few seconds later, I was there, side by side with this magnificent creature, a male (I know this as it had an evidently large tail) loggerhead turtle almost the size of a dinner table for four. Paddling its way through the waters slowly and swiftly, as if flying it occasionally bit into the sand under it (I don’t know why!).
I swam alongside it matching his every stroke with mine and trying to see the underwater world (his world) through my eyes; an heirloom of exotic food and adventure and of their family legacy that has lived on for millions of years and hopefully for the generations to come.
