Visitors to Nusa Lembongan doing their bit to save sea turtles

There are few people out there who would not be aware of the threats posed to the various species of marine turtle which grace our oceans in different corners of the world. I am very pleased to report that Nusa Lembongan is participating in a program to help address these threats.

Sunset Beach in Nusa Lembongan - a location for releasing baby turtles to the Indian Ocean

Bail Hai Cruises is running an adopt a turtle cruise programme whereby visitors release a baby Olive Ridley Turtle to the ocean on the Nusa Lembongan. These turtles have been hatched in a supervised facility in neighbouring Bali from eggs collected from beaches in west Bali where scavenging from dogs and other disturbance provide very real threat. All revenue generated from the release programme goes towards:

i. incentivising local villagers in Bali to report incidents of laying turtles so that the eggs can be taken away from areas of danger into the supervised hatchery



ii. education of schoolchildren in Bali about the importance of marine conservation and the role of turtles in that

iii. the administration and improvement of the hatchery

iv. the collection of data for research into turtle populations

This weekend I was lucky enough to witness the release of 15 or so baby turtles on my very favourite Sunset Beach on Nusa Lembongan. Each of the tiny youngsters made it successfully to the ocean and it was great to see the interest from all the participating visitors and the children in particular.

Clearly this is a very worthy programme and one which we would urge all visitors to island to participate in. For just US$10 you can adopt and release a baby turtle. There may be other participants in the scheme but I can certainly recommend Bali Hai Cruises from everything I witnessed this weekend. According to the supervisor they are running multiple release cruises at the moment and more details are available on the Bali Hai Cruises website.