Turtle Island National Park ~ Borneo

Turtle Island

From Sandakan, we took a boat to Selingan Island, part of Turtle Islands
National Park (Pulau Penyu), this took about one hour and crossed Sulu Sea.

Late into the evening we saw two giant turtles, that had swam ashore to lay eggs. These endangered turtles were over a metre long each weighed over 100 kg. and were green turtles.

The following morning we saw around 50 baby turtles hatching at the nearby conservation centre. We stayed overnight on the island.


	top left - turtle island top right - turtle tracks after returning to sea left - green turtle on beach below - egg laying



right - baby turtles hatching after 60 days in nest below left - the conservation centre where eggs are transferred to keep them safe from predators below right - each nest is labelled with turtles i.d. number, date the eggs where laid the number of eggs. In this case it was the last turtles to lay eggs in 1999 and 80 eggs were laid

During the visit to Borneo we passed many communities built by water, as the sea is such a rich source of food.
Indeed often sea creatures were stored in tanks ready for cooking.

Unfortunately turtle eggs are collected by some nationalities and are used as food.