Do you remember your very first encounter with a sea turtle? and the first word(s) at the encounter? My first word at my very first encounter with a sea turtle was a more colorful version of “oops!” It was a moonless night on Great Nicobar Island, the tide had already gone out, and the shallow reef was exposed. My data entry for that night was “one emerging green turtle, accidentally mistaken for boulder in the dark, was frightened back into the sea at 1850 hours on 5th March 1991.”