By Cecilia Alvear, Source: The Huffington Post

They are like ninjas, dressed completely in black, spying and moving stealthily in the night to avoid detection. These are not military commandos, but rather a trio of Galápagos National Park rangers, backed up by an international group of volunteers, monitoring the nesting activities of green sea turtles. The 2014 nesting season runs from January until June and the group’s mission is to protect the eggs from predators. The sea turtles began breeding in December and the females are now heading for the beaches of Galápagos to lay their eggs.

The scene is played out nightly at La Quinta Beach on Isabela Island, where the rangers have set up camp. This is outside the areas open to visitors and is the main Galápagos nesting area for the turtles, known to scientists as Chelonia mydas. The park also plans to set up a second monitoring camp on Las Bachas beach on Santa Cruz Island, another nesting area.
Using red light, which the turtles can’t see, members of the monitoring team work in pairs to track the females. Team members sneak behind the lumbering creatures as the turtles choose spots to dig nests with their hind flippers. As the turtles lay their eggs, the monitors count each one. A typical nest chamber is about 20 inches deep and can hold about 70 eggs. The National Park Directorate said in a press release that the monitors counted 30 nests on the first day.

Read the rest of the story at: The Huffington Post