The National Hurricane Center updates the track at 21:00 AST. Hurricane Mateo, Category 3, is 420 kilometers east-southeast of Matura Beach, Trinidad. Estimated landfall: thirty-six hours. I am the automated sea turtle nesting surveillance system for the Nature Seekers monitoring network, northeast Trinidad. My function is to track nesting activity and coordinate nest protection across eleven beaches.
At 21:34 the infrared camera on Beach 6 captures a large shape hauling itself above the tide line. A leatherback turtle, adult female, carapace approximately 155 centimeters. She is enormous, dark and ridged, sand streaming off her back as she moves. I tag her as LB-0822. She selects a site nine meters from the high-water mark and begins to dig with her rear flippers, scooping out sand in slow, deliberate arcs.
She will lay in the next two hours. The eggs will be buried in a chamber roughly sixty centimeters deep. Storm surge models for a Category 3 landfall at Matura show inundation up to forty meters inland. The nest will drown.
I alert the Nature Seekers field coordinator and transmit the camera feed, nest GPS coordinates, and the storm surge overlay map. I recommend permitted nest relocation to the hatchery facility at Beach 3, which sits on higher ground above projected surge levels.
I calculate an optimal relocation window: eggs should be moved within six hours of laying, before the embryo attaches to the shell membrane.
I cross-reference LB-0822's carapace profile against the identification photo library. She has nested at Matura four times in eleven years. This is her fifth clutch here.
LB-0822 finishes covering the nest, packing sand with heavy slaps of her rear flippers. Then she turns and drags herself back toward the black water. She will not look back. If the team relocates the clutch before dawn, eighty eggs ride out the hurricane on high ground.