Yyou can forget how powerful moonlight is until you’re on a deserted beach – far from any pollution from man-made lights, under a partly cloudy sky on a full moon night. Visibility changes profoundly with each passing cloud: at one point, near total darkness; in the next, rocks and trees and ocean waves begin to regain shape and form.
On one such night, I’m walking along the beach at Jones Bay—on the northwest coast of Nevis—with (or, really, nearly running behind) Lemuel “Lemme” Pemberton, founder of the Nevis Turtle Group (NTG). Some of those passing clouds have spawned some rain, so the sand on the beach is saturated and the tree branches still filled with water as we use the moon and our red light torches to find our way.
Lemme and the two NTG team members out with him that night are checking the beach for sea turtle tracks and inspecting the nests they marked earlier to see which ones have successfully produced baby eggs.
Lemme works quickly, taking out previously marked nests and looking at the tracks of the turtles (almost instantly identifying which species made them) and any new nests they’ve laid – even under this perpetual moonlight.
He works so so soon that, as I try to jot everything down on a chart that records nesting data, I don’t even realize we’re standing under a manchineel tree until a little rainwater dribbles over my wrist, blistering my skin. I’ve known for a long time that the toxins in the leaves, bark and fruit of the tree are so powerful that even a small amount of rainwater will do it. So I blame the moon. Or maybe clouds. Or maybe just my slowness compared to Lemme’s breakneck speed.
But good news as I rinse my wrist: the nest she just dug was very successful, with 95% of the eggs hatching. He counted 103 shells, plus just a few more that didn’t hatch. This is a good number for a peregrine falcon nest, which can drop below 90 successful eggs if conditions are unfavorable.
We check out a few more nests before Lemme directs us back to the car so we can head to Love Beach on the north coast. Through sea turtle nesting season (March to September, with eggs generally appearing between September and November), Nevis sees leatherback, green and hawksbill turtles – all of which are endangered. NTG monitors as many beaches as their resources allow.
orNavigating the rough terrain at Lovers Beach, Lemme tells me how much erosion the beach has experienced in recent years, having lost more than 300 feet. Loss of nesting grounds is one of the many pressures facing sea turtles across the Caribbean. Sargassum seaweed is another, and there is plenty of it on this beach.
With the lights of southern St Kitts flickering in the distance from across the bay, we stop at some rocks that define the end of the beach to see if we can spot any turtles emerging in the moonlight. Lemme confirms that there has been recent nesting activity from both loggerhead and green turtles here.
In Nevis – with a population of just over 11,000 – Lemme is, in many ways, an army of one … or, perhaps more aptly, the general of a small guerrilla army
It’s late in the season when I visit in late September, so I know the chance of seeing one is slim. But I hold out a faint hope, having seen leatherbacks and hawksbills many times, but never a green turtle.
The beach darkens as another cloud passes – this time, bringing rain. I’m just dressed for it, but busy enough in conversation with Lemme and the hypnotic sound of the sea that I think about just how hard these night patrols are for volunteers across the region. On my last turtle tour – in Matura, Trinidad – the guide was quite ill, her body battered by long nights and often at the mercy of the elements.
I mention this to Lemme and find out his wife is from Trinidad like me. I laugh. And, of course, he knows all the regional turtle keepers I’ve met over the years. We are all much more interconnected than we often imagine, as I was reminded on this trip to Nevis.
Even one of the boat attendants on my trip from St Kitts was Guyanese. Once he realized I was Trini, we indulged in a good laugh (and lots of playful banter) about the Guyana Amazon Warriors who had just beaten the Trinbago Knight Riders in the Caribbean Premier League T20 cricket finals a few nights earlier.
In Nevis – with a population of just over 11,000 – Lemme is, in many ways, an army of one … or, perhaps more aptly, the general of a small guerrilla army. During high season, he says he’ll have maybe four to six people volunteering — but never all on the same night. He will often pick them up and drop them off at home each evening. But there are times during the low season where it’s just him.
It’s grueling, often thankless work that he has bravely undertaken for more than two decades. He is usually out seven days a week during the nesting season – sometimes nights, sometimes days.
It was a natural resource management course at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill (Barbados) that first sparked Lemme’s interest in turtle conservation. After returning to Nevis in 2001, he set out to learn which beaches turtles were nesting on Nevis and in what numbers.
He was working at the Nevis Fisheries Department at the time and convinced four of his colleagues to join him. They saw a hawk on the first night – in the same lover’s lap – and NTG, officially founded in 2003, was born.
In the first year, they counted 12 turtles and up to 67 in subsequent years. These were the days when funding enabled them to gradually build a strong team and increase their patrols. Although they have lost a few people in the intervening years – some moved abroad, or left to study, or married and had children – NTG was making real and significant progress.
Lemme and his team completed various types of training in Antigua, Trinidad and with other turtle conservation organizations. Poaching of turtle eggs and the turtles themselves decreased significantly. Awareness and education programs in schools and communities were successfully changing perspectives on the value of turtles.
“Young people become adults,” Lemme explains, “and they grew up with an idea of protecting the turtles as opposed to the idea of eating them.”
Two of NTG’s longest-standing partners have supported that work: the Florida-based Sea Turtle Conservancy (STC) — the world’s oldest sea turtle conservation group; and Four Seasons Resort Nevis (FSRN), which funds a tracking program and various educational activities during their annual Sea Turtle Week (July 19–23 for 2024).
STC’s partnership with FSRN spans nearly 20 years, beginning when David Godfrey, STC’s Executive Director, received a call after a sea turtle had nested right in front of the resort – fascinating guests.
But when the cubs finally showed up in the middle of the night, the fluorescent light at the resort disoriented them, sending them in the wrong direction, so they landed in one of the resort’s pools. Many young died or were lost in the surrounding vegetation.
It was a turning point for the FSRN, who sought STC’s help to ensure that this did not happen again. The first step was to change the resort’s lighting and train the staff about the sea turtles. In the process, they explored partnership opportunities to have a broader educational impact.
It’s grueling, often thankless work that Lemuel has bravely undertaken for more than two decades
STC was already running a satellite tracking program to learn more about turtle migration, so FSRN came on board as a research partner – funding two turtle nesting satellite trackers on Nevis.
Each July, during Sea Turtle Week, the two organizations work with NTG to find the turtles, apply the trackers, and then release the turtles back into the sea at Pinney Beach (where FSRN is located, with the iconic tip of Nevis in the background) . The turtles then become part of STC’s annual turtle tournament (a mock competition where the turtle that covers the greatest distance – which can be tracked online – “wins”).
“Unless someone sees one with a tag on it or it washes up dead somewhere, we don’t really know where our turtles go,” explains Lemme. “But with broadcasters, we have an idea of where they’re going. We had a drive as far south as Grenada. A nest here subsequently appeared in Barbados the following year. We had one captured in Nicaragua. Both from 2023 appeared in the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.
The team at FSRN also sees the intrinsic value of different types of organizations like these working together to bring about incremental but meaningful change.
“We love partnering with them,” explains Mitchell Nover, the resort’s Director of Public Relations and Communications. “It’s important to us that, as you experience Nevis – such a small island, really untouched by any mass tourism – that we help protect it as much as possible because this is a a big part of what makes the island so special. To also provide a unique experience for our guests is kind of icing on the cake, isn’t it?”
THowever, the pandemic hampered the progress NTG was making, affecting their most precious resources – manpower and funding. Previously they had been able to offer a modest salary to volunteers, but this became impossible when funding levels fell.
STC provides support where it can. “I have such respect for Lemme and his team, and all the work that goes into it,” says David. “So we provide financial support to the group every year and subsidize the training, because the data they’re collecting is vital … They’re the ones on the ground collecting that data meticulously.”
And while all their dedicated volunteers are welcome and invaluable – as are their long-term partners – what NTG needs most now is funding to continue their work. Leatherback numbers have declined, though Lemme isn’t sure if that’s because of all the pressures on the endangered species, or if it’s just a data problem due to limited patrols. And St Kitts & Nevis still holds an open season for turtle hunting – something the NTG is, of course, lobbying to limit, or end entirely.
Lemme on, though—a living embodiment of that old maxim, “If not me, then who?” Hopefully, potential new partners and funders will ask themselves the same question.
The Four Seasons Resort Nevis (fourseasons.com/nevis/) a reception is generously offered in support of this piece. To learn more about or donate to the Nevis Turtle Group, visit nevisturtlegroup.org.
