Turtle release? You look up people’s experience of ‘Turtle release’ and they talk about magnificent creatures:

“Once they hit the water, they were natural-born swimmers, stroking powerfully (for a tiny two-inch long creature) out to sea. The experience was both fascinating and heart-warming.”

That’s arse. First off, we were at this Sipadan Dive place, where they save turtles. Second, we went to see turtles laying eggs at night, and we weren’t allowed to disturb them, and that prevented us from making our way back to the bar. Turtles coming between a bunch of beer-starved marine conservationists and their Carlsberg – they should be made into soup and handbags as far as I’m concerned. And third, people spent ages babbling on about how they caught fleeting glimpses of these Jurassic submarines while we were on our conservation project, while I didn’t see hide nor fin of them, not until I paid a (Malaysian) king’s randsom to stay at a marine park, where they just get in the way and detract from spending time looking for hammerheads.

Turtles are the lamest mofos I’ve ever had the misfortune to be waylayed by. They’re really exciting until you see them all over the place. Here they surface where you are trying to descend. And it would be too much to get in the way of these ‘protected’ underwater muppets. You have to avoid them. There, your divemaster makes you stop to watch them fail to mate. The little lady turtle on her tiptoes while the lumbering turtle stud completely fails to couple with her, and he’s only doing about 1 mile an hour. And a baby looks on, confused. And because they’re protected, you’re not supposed to hang onto them for rides.

Quite how the poorly aiming Mr Turtles manage to get jiggy with Mrs Turtle is beyond me; every time we watched them, they screwed up screwing. (Though, to be fair, if I was with Mrs Malibu and ten lairy rubber suited gimps were watching me, I may suffer a bit of anxiety. But I’d make sure I was within 5 feet of her when I tried) But they must managed to get a bun in Mrs Turtle’s oven, as the Defenders of The Turtle wait for them to lay eggs on the beach at night. Mrs Turtle painstakingly covers her eggs in sand for a few hours (plenty of time to annoy people who have a protected turtle between them and the bar). Then the Defenders of The Turtle collect the eggs and put them in cages to hatch, before releasing buckets of the little critters back onto the beach for the delight of tourists.

Watching the tiny cartoon creatures flip flap down the beach is quite entertaining to the Nikonned-up crowds. Over-eager photographers are warned from getting too close to the hatchlings, as they make their way into the clear blue sea, looking rather like wind-up toy turtles.Much “ooh”ing and “aah”ing is heard. People think these likkel turtley-wurtles are sweeet. Sweet soon turns to sour, as the resident herons swoop down from their nearby hiding place and a few turtles never make it out to see. It was very entertaining to see the smiles and gooey eyed looks of the tourists turn to to looks of jaw-dropping shock and horror, as the still flip flapping turtles were carried off into the sky.