Beachgoer Steps in To Save Hundreds Of Baby Sea Turtles Using a Simple Household Tool

Contrary to the syrupy descriptions of nature poets, life doesn’t care a bit about feelings. A professional rabble-rouser, life stirs battles between its own organisms and sits back to witness their fight-and-flight dance unfold. In the case of sea turtles, for instance. When a baby sea turtle pops out from a cracked egg, it has a short window of time that it needs to travel. In one clutch laid by the mother, only a few dozen eggs hatch. This window reveals who will live and who will die. It’s a brutish fight, and only the fastest will survive. With shadows of sinister gulls and black vultures hovering above their tiny heads, these turtles need to totter out of their nests, navigate the sandy stretch, and travel to the water without getting killed. Many don’t make it. So when Rene Ramos (@reneramos371) noticed some baby turtles wrangling with this life-or-death scenario, he did what an ideal human does: He jumped in to protect the babies.

The short video opens to reveal a vast stretch of white sand blanketing a shoreline in Tulum, Mexico. In the distant background, azure Mexican waters appear, rising and falling in foamy waves that are lapping at the coast. A few moments into the footage, the camera pans around in a clockwise direction to show Ramos standing in the sand, dressed only in a pair of navy blue shorts and slippers. His hands are curled around the handle of a garden rake that he is holding. He seems to be looking at something in the opposite direction to where the sharp metallic tines of the rake are shooting out into the air.

As the video continues, Ramos turns around. With his gaze clinging to the cloudless azure sky, he sticks the rake upwards. The camera’s movement reveals that he was spying on a giant black seabird hovering above his head. Another few moments reveal that he wasn’t protecting himself from the bird, but rather a clutch of freshly-hatched baby sea turtles that seem to be crawling on the sand like little blobs of ink moving on a canvas. One baby appears to be too frightened that it has isolated its little den, engraved in the sand. In conversation with The Dodo, the photographer revealed that he had spotted the predatory birds encircling the babies, which is when he had decided to protect them. His rake came in handy.

“I had the opportunity to appreciate when the turtles spawned,” Ramos wrote in a comment. “Now I could see them emerge and try to reach the sea.” In this case, the turtles were He added that the turtles in the video were baby loggerheads. But the same life cycle applies to other kinds of sea turtles, including leatherbacks and green sea turtles. As a documentary by Nat Geo Animals shows, once these turtles are welcomed into the safety of the ocean, they can relax there for a few years until they grow into adults. Once they are full-fledged adults, they travel for miles and miles for the “homecoming” ritual.

How they navigate the journey back home is still a mystery. But what animal scientists know is that both males and females traverse the ocean to return to the site where they were born, to do the same ritual that their mother did, to give birth to them. They return to the same site and lay eggs. And the cycle continues, like a dramatic crescendo.

Meanwhile, in this case, thousands of viewers leapt into the comments section to write notes of appreciation for Ramos. “You possibly saved generations of turtles,” commented @AuntOli, according to Google translation. Many, however, expressed skepticism, saying that “nature’s food chain should not be interfered with.” Others defended him by saying that it was okay to have intervened, as sea turtles are at the brink of extinction. “It's one of those things that I know is wrong but if I saw someone doing it, I wouldn't say anything,” @Lucyjazzcat remarked.

You can follow Rene Ramos (@reneramos371) on TikTok to watch his nature-themed video logs.

You can watch the video here.