Alimake, or Delaki village is one of the villages in Alor Regency, precisely on Pantar Island, Central Pantar District. To visit this village from Kalabahi, we can travel by motor boat to Bakalang port, Pantar island. Then, we continue by road trip about 45 km away, so it is reasonable if Delaki village is quite far from the crowd of a city. Delaki village itself has promising potential as a tourist village in Alor in the future because it has a million natural beauties and richness that is still unrevealed.
In addition to the cultural richness, its natural authenticity can be seen from its beaches and hills. Delaki village also has other unique features, one of them is protected turtles, which can be found on Delaki beach. On this long sandy beach, turtles lay their eggs almost every month and even more than once a month. It indicated the turtle is easily found here. The local community said that in the past time, turtles came on the seashore during the day, but it is decreasing day by day due to illegal fishing, so at this time we cannot find them during the day.
Turtles will only come at night to lay eggs, unfortunately, these animals are often caught, due to a lack of knowledge and information regarding the preservation of the species. Commonly the community in the village does not know that turtle needs to be preserved, they only know to find meat for consumption, and they predicted carefully when the turtle would come to lay eggs so that almost all are caught. Both the brood and the eggs are all taken and eaten. Unconsciously the habitat of the turtle is threatened with extinction.
Seeing the miserable story, we, as young people in the village who have information and knowledge about the turtle that must be protected and preserved, are trying to voice this to the people of Delaki village not to hunt or kill a turtle. We persuasively urge the public to let go and let these animals breed. But unfortunately, this effort never succeeded. People are less concerned and continue to catch a turtle.
One time in the morning, when we were working out on a long sandy beach, we found traces of turtles landing, then returned back into the sea. It indicated the turtle is safe. We tried to find the eggs but could not. It seemed the turtle has not laid eggs and usually it will come again the following night. Right, the turtle came again to lay its eggs, but the mother turtle was caught by one of the residents. We were late! When we went to the beach early in the morning, we only found traces of the turtle landing and not returning to the sea, meaning that it had been caught. We rushed back and looked for the person. We only saw the shell and minced turtle meat when we arrived at his house. Luckily, we found 97 eggs. Then, we saved them with a guarantee that we would pay the price as the agreement, and we brought them back to the coast for the hatching process.
It is
not easy to encourage people to love the environment, especially turtle species
if people still need
food sources and lack awareness to love God's creation. ***
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