was in the middle of the day, on jagged coral rubble. The turtle tried to dig
a hole with her back flippers. After much exertion, she produced a
shallow trough. By this point, one of her flippers was bleeding. She
heaved herself farther up the shore and tried again, with similar results.
She was still at it an hour and a half later, when I had to go get a safety
lecture from the manager of the research station, Russell Graham. He
warned me not to go swimming when the tide was going out, as I might
find myself “swept off to Fiji.” (This was a line I would hear repeated many
times during my stay, though there was some disagreement about
whether the current was heading toward Fiji or really away from it.) Once
I’d taken in this and other advisories—the bite of a blue-ringed octopus is
usually fatal; the sting of a stonefish is not, but it is so painful it will make
you wish it were—I went back to see how the turtle was doing.
Apparently, she had given up and crawled back into the sea.
One Tree Island and its surrounding reef, as seen from the air.
The One Tree Island Research Station is a bare-bones affair. It consists
of two makeshift labs, a pair of cabins, and an outhouse with a composting
toilet. The cabins rest directly on the rubble, for the most part with no
floor, so that even when you’re indoors you feel as if you’re out. Teams of
scientists from all around the world book themselves into the station for
stays of a few weeks or a few months. At one point, someone must have