Ethical turtle tourism

UP UNTIL 2005, divemaster Huang Pei See, 42, had never seen a turtle come ashore to nest. So when she woke up one morning to find tracks all over the sand in Tanjung Tukas, a secluded enclave at Pulau Perhentian Besar, the first thing she thought was: “Who drove a tractor across the beach?”

It eventually dawned on Huang, who had set up a dive shop there with her two business partners, that these were turtle tracks. However, she dismissed it as a one-off occurrence. It wasn’t. As the turtle nesting season (which runs from April to September) wore on, the ancient reptiles kept coming, and Huang began to stay up at night to watch them.