| Photo Information |
Copyright: michael shalter (retlash)
![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Note Writer [C: 60 W: 1 N: 168]](http://i1.treklens.com/misc/g-n-g.gif) (1069) |
| Genre: People |
| Medium: Color |
| Date Taken: 2006-11-24 |
| Categories: Nature |
| Exposure: f/2.7, 1/8 seconds |
| More Photo Info: [view] |
| Photo Version: Original Version |
| Date Submitted: 2009-03-31 14:54 |
| Viewed: 211 |
| Points: 2 |
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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
This is not a great photo, technically speaking. The problem was that when a huge (1.3 m long) female leatherback turtle starts to lay her eggs in the sand, it's extremely "impolite" to interrupt her by using a flash. My daughter, the one on the right, gazed into "mama's" eyes for the better part of 15 minutes, before "mama" blinked, as if to say..." O.K. kid, seen enough?!" There are only about a 1000 leatherbacks on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. To see one up close like this is a rare and memorable moment.
Two species...one, 70 million years old, confronting the other...only 1/5 million, at best. Yet, there is, for those wise and sensitive enough to grasp it, a bridge that ties us "new guys on the block" with them.
A few months after this photo, I saw another leatherback lay her eggs at just about the same spot. It took her half the night...in a semi-comatose state, but she managed to lay 70 eggs. Maybe, if she's lucky, one will survive to carry on her genes. My daughter's chances of that are, I trust, far more favorable. |
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![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Star Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 462 W: 123 N: 704]](http://i1.treklens.com/misc/g-g-g.gif){kind=small}
