By Ed Stoddard and Spokes Mashiyane
The signs of the scuffle were fresh but it is a struggle that has gone on for tens of millions of years. Just minutes before, dozens of tiny turtles had burst from the sand under the cover of darkness to make a mad dash for the sea by running a deadly gauntlet of ghost crabs.
“There’s been action here. You can see the drag marks where a crab dragged a hatchling away,” said Jeff Gaisford, communications manager for KZN Wildlife, the conservation body for South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. Each year between October and February, hundreds of loggerhead turtles and their cousins, the gigantic leatherbacks, come to South Africa’s northeast shores to build primitive nests in the sand and deposit their eggs.
Read the original article at: Reuters
