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Adopt a turtle in Bali

The turtle Conservation and Education Centre is based in Serangan, Bali. It’s only a 15 minute drive from our scuba diving centre in Sanur. Our guest Melissa visited the centre and wrote this great blog on her visit.

 

Turtle Preservation

 

I visited the Turtle Conservation and Education Center and had a really great time.

 

As I’m a scuba diver, I’m always super excited when I see a beautiful turtle swimming, so I was really interested in what Bali was doing to preserve these amazing creatures. The center is situated in the island of Serangan, just 20 min away from Sanur.

 

They have different pools, first I saw the one where they keep the adult turtles that are harmed or sick and need veterinary supervision. There a lovely person on the staff that explained to me how the center works. They operate in all Bali and police or people call them when they see a turtle in trouble or being sold on the black market for example.

 

They take them back to the center, take care of them and later will let them go back to the sea if they’re in good health.

 

Turtle population in Bali

 

Before turtle were hunted for food or traditional ceremonies. Even though it’s now illegal to hunt them, there’s still people hunting them and that’s where the center is working, to protect and punish any illegal traffic. Unfortunately, now some species are critically endangered, like the Hawksbill turtle, but the Turtle Conservation and Education Center do amazing work to protect them.

 

In the center there’s also plenty of pool full of baby turtles and I was like a kid when I saw all those cute babies swimming.

 

How you can help

 

There are multiple ways to help this center to grow, you can donate, buy some lovely little turtle statues or you can adopt a turtle. I had the chance to do the last one, so I paid 150k and had the honour to release a beautiful baby turtle to the sea.

 

Turtle release back to the sea

I chose my turtle from one of the pools, the choice was hard as they were all so cute, put it in a little bucket with some water and then they drove me 5 mins away to the beach.

 

There I walked to a quiet place on the beach to release my little turtle. It was so amazing to see it waddling its way to the water. The journey took some time as it was a rocky beach, and it had to fight against the waves bringing it back to the beach sometimes in the seaweed, but it finally found its way to the ocean. It was an incredible memory to see this little baby release in its natural place. Returning to the Turtle Conservation center and they gave me a nice certificate saying I released a baby turtle and also a cool necklace.

 

Thanks to Melissa for this great blog.  To find out more things to do in Bali, check out our Diving Indo land tours