In Tokelau, school kids have been rushing home for their favourite activity of the day: turtle time. Five-year-old Ilisapesi Sakalia (Pesi) loved her sea turtle friends, "Popo" and "Uto". 'Popo' means husked coconut, and 'Uto' means a coconut sprout. "It's teaching them to look after what we have in our environment," Pesi's grandmother Asi Pasilio, Tokelau's Natural Resources and Environment department director, told RNZ Pacific.
They are two of the more than 30 sea turtles found near their atoll Nukunonu late last year, and taken in by local families so they would not get eaten by sharks. "They were very small, like babies of a few days, and they they were much bigger - double, triple in size - when they left," Asi said. The family would have liked to look after the hatchlings for around a year, so that they could have grown big and strong before being released back into the wild Pacific Ocean.
