Fascinating NY Times story on turtle eggs relocation following the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill & dispersal.

The government called this effort a set of “extraordinary measures being taken in direct response to an unprecedented human-caused disaster.” And as one U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist told me, “We immediately knew it was more work than we could do on our own.” Fortunately, a vast and well-organized infrastructure of volunteers was already in place: people who, for years, happened to have been honing some of the very skills that the survival of these imperiled animals suddenly hinged on — not because they saw such a crisis coming, but basically because they really loved turtles.

... classic story of ordinary people called to do extraordinary things. But the extraordinary things were so eccentric, and the ordinary people were so unassuming, that it took me a while to realize that. In the middle of an environmental emergency that seemed to demand dispassionate and scientific decision making, it was an emotional connection to turtles — and, in some cases, a slightly overemotional one — that wound up making certain people indispensable.

Watch a nest erupt and the hatchlings sprint for the water just once and you’re hooked, the turtle people all told me. “You’re just wondering how God put all this together,” one man said.

...among the team leaders, there’s a feeling of ownership, or at least devout responsibility for the nests — a commitment to safeguarding the eggs while they incubate, then helping the hatchlings into the water.

Harassing or harming a loggerhead is a federal offense, punishable by a fine of up to US$25,000; destroy a nest of 100 eggs, one law-enforcement agent told me, and the fines “could really stack up.”

www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/magazine/03turtles-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&src=ISMR_ HP_LO_MST_FB