October 27^th, 2006

The first heads emerging from the sand Credit : Arnauld Lafuma

Even if they were modest, yesterday’s findings were significant and the diggers team went on probing with more confidence, hoping to uncover other objects coming from the Utile.
However, once again the work done in the morning would give different results.

When we probed deeper, under the 80 cm thick modern sub-base covering the upper part of the island, we found a layer of white sand as usual.
About 15 cm below, there was a grey layer, which soon appeared to be ash mixed with sand. That layer was quite thick, we had to go 25 cm deeper to find white sand again.
We riddled the ash layer and we were surprised to find, apart from tiny charcoal pieces, a great deal of small bird bones, some turtle bones and some iron nails.

Then a hundred turtles sprang out Credit : Arnauld Lafuma

We were certainly in the dump area of our forgotten Malagasy castaways’ house, and although we didn’t know where their house was exactly, we knew that we were close.
Of course, it was too soon to draw conclusions because the probed area didn’t exceed 50 x 50 cm. However, we could see that the castaways mainly ate birds, whose species we would intend to define.

Wild race towards the sea Credit : Arnauld Lafuma

Nevertheless, we didn’t find any fish bones in the area where we worked. But in the afternoon, we discovered some fish vertebrae when we extended the area to the north. So we just had to think about the direction in which we had to search. The iron nails suggested that even if the dead wood from the veloutiers was used as a fuel for cooking, the castaways also threw some pieces of the Utile’s framework into the fire.

Whereas yesterday we were happy with the discoveries we had made, a call on the VHF made us run up to the beach just above the wreck of the Utile.

It’s time to get into water Credit : Arnauld Lafuma

Something rare was happening. The whole nest of small turtles was just emerging and was rushing towards the sea. At first, we could only see the heads of the small grey and blue turtles. They seemed to get their breath back, but suddenly, ten, twenty, a hundred turtles rushed towards the sea with energy, hurtling down the sandy slope and skirting round the veloutiers. The fact that the divers were there prevented the birds, the frigates going round in the sky and the sandpipers which were more discrete but attentive, from disturbing the turtles on their way to the sea.

Diurnal hatchings are usually considered to be lost. But this time it was not the case and more than a hundred turtles could reach the sea without difficulty. However, they still had to face the bar jacks, the sharks and other predators patrolling the reef.