A womb of Dermochelifs coriacea’s eggs, or “rua da” as called by local people has been found off of the Vietnamese coast. However, no baby turtle was born from the eggs.
Rua da’s eggs were found for the first time in Vietnam
At 1 am of June 24, Nguyen Ngoc Tan saw a big black thing moving and puffing right in front of his restaurant on the Bai Dai seashore in Thuy Trieu Hamlet of Khanh Hoa province.
“I guest it was a rua da, because my uncle once also caught a turtle like this some 10 years ago here,” he recalled the day.
Tan then called his relatives and friends. After the turtle laid eggs, the people tried to turn it upside down and called scientists.
The turtle, 2 meters in length and 400 kilos in weight was then brought back to the sea on the morning of June 24.
“A lot of people flocked there and asked to purchase the turtle’s eggs. A woman from HCM City came and asked to buy eggs at any price to treat asthma. However, I refused to sell the eggs,” he said.
Chu The Cuong, MA, a senior researcher of the Vietnam Science and Technology Academy, came to the site just one week after the news about the catching of a rua da. The scientist, when investigating the site, discovered another newly laid womb of eggs, just 100 meters north of the place where Tan found the first womb of eggs.
According to Cuong, this is for the first time Vietnam finds the evidences showing that rua da go ashore laying eggs.
On August 18, Cuong backed to Bai Dai area from Hai Phong City. He and Tan spent sleepless nights on August 18 and 19 nights, expecting for the baby turtles to be hatched. But nothing happened.
According to Cuong, in principle, rua da eggs would get hatched after 50-60 days, depending on the environment temperature. However, as Cuong could not see any signs of baby turtles, he tried to investigate under the sand layer.
Cuong took an egg, removed the egg shell. There was egg white and yolk, but there was no embryo. No embryo was found in other 83 eggs, which means that no baby turtle would appear.
No more place for turtles to go laying eggs
Only four cases of turtles going ashore laying eggs have been found since 2000. Two were discovered in Quang Ngai and Quang Tri provinces in 2005, and two in Bai Dai area in 2004 and June 2013.
In the first three cases, the turtles had been caught before they laid eggs. The rua da in Quang Tri province was kept ashore for one day, while local people cut its private parts before the turtle was rescued.
According to Cuong, the rua da discovered in June 2013 is about 25 years old, reaching the adulthood.
He said the eggs are not fertilized maybe because the turtle has no partner. “It is highly possible that she has to live alone,” she said.
When asked about the other womb of eggs Cuong discovered some days later, he said the eggs are not very likely to give baby turtles, and these might be the eggs of the same turtle.
Experts have recently warned that turtles nowadays don’t have places to go laying eggs, because the land areas have been reserved for shrimp hatchery, tourism development and resorts.