Flying doctor turns turtle champion

While most patients need to be green around the gills to seek the attention of US emergency doctor Dale Cotton, Hedland’s flatback turtles need no such excuses.

After arriving in town to work with Hedland’s Royal Flying Doctor Service, Dr Cotton became fascinated by the marine reptiles’ annual nesting season.

Not long after, he found himself crouched in Cemetery Beach’s sands and reef waters chasing the perfect snap of nesting mothers and their hatchlings.

By the end of the season, he had enough beautiful photos to publish a children’s book called Turtle Time, now stocked by the Port Hedland Visitor Centre.

As an outsider to the region, he said he and his wife had been amazed by how the turtles nested in the heart of Hedland, so close to a major industrial port.

“One of the most interesting things I (learnt) is that there are seven species of sea turtle, but only one species nests in only one country and that is the flatback turtle, which nests in Australia,” he said.

“So the flatback is really something that you guys own — that is pretty neat.”

Now back in the US, Dr Cotton said he hoped Turtle Time, which used photos to capture each nesting stage from mother turtles emerging from the sea to their hatchlings’ battle past the fringing reef, would contribute to conservation efforts.

There is also a more emotional motivation for the book after his baby daughter, Fiona, arrived just after the end of this year’s turtle nesting season.

“It is exciting to think she will look back at this book and these hatchlings are like her cousins,” he joked.