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March To The Sea
Green
sea turtles emerging from the nest cast bronze sculpture
During the summer of 2008 I had an
opportunity to visit the country of Costa Rica with a group of
students/teachers through Miami University’s Green Teacher
Workshop. While
there we spent two nights at a location in the northeast of
the country called Tortuguero or “place of the turtles”.
One dark and stormy night, and it really was very dark
and very stormy, we lay
on the exposed beach of Tortuguero in a driving rain with bolt
after bolt of lightning and chest throbbing thunder playing
about us. It was on this beach, revealed in stark strobes of
light which alternately revealed the beach in stark detail and
an opaque blackness where we watched turtle after turtle come
ashore, struggle up the beach, dig a nest,
lay a clutch of eggs and return to the ocean.
These were green sea turtles, 22,500 of which will
repeat what I had witnessed each summer on this one beach, the
largest such nesting area on the planet.
Green sea turtles are one of several different species
of turtle that nest on this beach and one of only about
seven sea turtle
species in all the oceans.
The worlds other turtle species include the Hawksbill,
Olive Ridley, Kemp’s Ridley, Loggerhead, Flatback and
Leatherback.
It was this experience that inspired me
to sculpt the Hatchling, Independence, Green
and the mass hatching entitled March to the Sea.
March to the Sea
is made from solid cast
bronze. It weighs
about 10 pounds and is
12” x 26” x 1” in size.
This piece is offered as a limited edition in bronze of
20 castings.
It is a sculpture of a mass hatching of a
clutch of eggs from a green sea turtle.
The nests may contain an average of 110 eggs each.
The nest is a foot or more deep, all of these eggs are
incubated by the heat from the sun and depending on species,
nest depth and temperature they will hatch in about two
months. The newly
hatched turtles “swim” upward through the sand toward the
surface and emerge in groups of twenty to one hundred.
They take a moment to orient themselves and then turn
and begin their “march to the sea”.
March To The Sea
Copyright Herrmann Studio 2010 |
