Dancing the Samba
It is hatchling time in Brazil. Above, an olive ridley nest is being excavated at Pirambu, one of TAMAR’s stations in the State of Sergipe. 
Although it was the tail end of the nesting season and regular night patrols on the beach had stopped on March 15, we were delighted to encounter 3 ridleys and one loggerhead one night on Pirambu beach a few weeks ago. As I lay behind one of the ridleys and watched her excavate her nest chamber with delicate and precise flipper movements, I realized that it had been almost 10 years since I had last watched a ridley nest…in fact my last encounter had also been on a Brazilian beach further south in the State of Bahia--we had come across the nesting ridley at 6 am after walking back and forth all night in search of nesting loggerheads. I remember it was the morning of my birthday…Incredible feeling to mark the passage of time by nesting ridleys and to realize how much of life had happened between the two nesting encounters…
My reverie was disrupted by the ridley “dancing the samba” – a term used by some Brazilians to describe the amusingly vigorous side to side rocking movements of an olive ridley camouflaging her nest…
