It's a Teachable Moment

I am spending the week at New Smyrna Beach, Florida.  This morning I woke up to something that I am always teaching my students about but have never seen it myself before..... until today. I witnessed a sea turtle burying her eggs and then crawl back to the ocean. 

My daughter in law and I are both teachers so we both grabbed our cameras and ran straight to the beach.  She was pushing sand to cover the eggs and then turned around to head back to the ocean.  I noticed that she moved each flipper independently of each other like swimming.  After 10 strokes she would stop and rest and then move 10 more times.  It took about 10 minutes to get back into the water. 

As soon as she reached the water, I noticed that she lowered her head to submerge it.

Lesson plans are whirling through my head right now!!!

There are always postings around the beach condos to remove all tents and chairs at night because it might interfere with the turtles coming ashore.  I always kind of disregarded it but I understand now why they should be removed.  We left our tent out overnight and she made a path right under it to lay her eggs.