Île de Longue - Island hopping part 2

The second lot of pictures from my day on land is up (Best viewed as slideshow, by the way)! Île de Longue (or Long Island to the rest of us non french speaking folks) has a rather different avian fauna composition from Loop Island. Instead of boobies galore, this island is a frigate paradise. And Long Island is a green turtle (Chelonia mydas mydas) nesting site too! On our approach to the island, we saw at least eight out in the surf, waiting to clamber on shore that night. If there is no connection yet. 16th October is one day ahead of full moon. Marie-Catherine and Pierre jumped out on the boat as soon as we reached and ran towards one of of them for a photoshoot while I took my time to organize myself, finish my sandwich and Coke. Jean-paul drives a boat like a typical french man - very reckless. We were getting splashed all the way! Christian was much gentler.

Anyway, the nice close-ups in the set are all courtesy of Marie-Catherine, while the later shots (with a turtle splashing off) are by yours truly.

We did lots of beach combing and came across a huge empty carapace stuck between some branches. The poor creature must have been so exhausted after her egg laying business that she couldn't extricate herself out and died a very unpleasant death. It was a lucky find for us though. Cos it was just what we needed for the other project. But we weren't prepared for that find cos all Bertrand had was a filmsy trash bag. So after some reorganising, we had everything squared away, but only barely. To cut our losses, we decided to cut across the island back to the meeting point cos there was no way we would be able to circumvate the island without the bag breaking at some point....and not a moment too soon either, cos that bag gave up when we got back and Bertrand had to use his rain jacket to keep it all in.

More pictures from the cruise proper coming up soon!