Turtle tracking and breakthrough moments

The three factors that make or break successful communication in everything from arguments to novels

I’ve been working as a volunteer turtle tracker for the past couple of weeks here in Western Australia. It’s nesting season for the snake-necked turtles, and they have come up against so many threats that the survival rate for baby turtles is pretty much 0%, so we’ve been tasked by the local council and scientific experts to track the turtles and protect them and their nests where possible. When they come out of our local lake, there is no suitable nesting ground close by (because the land is now a park and a housing estate) so they end up crossing roads and sometimes get run over. Or they’re attacked by magpies, ravens, foxes and dogs. Or sometimes chopped up by the council’s mowing equipment. If they get so far as to choose a nesting spot it’s often an inappropriate place, in exposed areas or in people’s back gardens. And months later, the hatchlings (each the size of a 20-cent piece) have to find their way back to the water, which includes all the same threats plus they also fall into drains en route. So basically, it’s a big mess, and the volunteers are a bunch of concerned citizens out there in fluoro jackets, following live turtles and protecting nests, and picking up dead turtles to take to vets for egg harvesting, all to give our long-necked friends a chance.

It seems like a good thing to do, right? So what I wasn’t expecting was the hostility from some of the locals as we work. From being told to ‘fuck off’ for asking those on bikes to slow down or dog-walkers to put dogs on leads, to being waved away with a ‘we’ve lived here for thirty years, we know all about turtles’, when we try to explain what we’re doing. Then there’s the oft-quoted line ‘Our dogs don’t hurt the turtles’, as a turtle quietly turns around and makes its way back to the lake without laying because it doesn’t feel safe any more.

Last week, as we tried to explain how we were working to protect the turtles, a small group of local dog-walkers waved us away with these kinds of comments, obviously irritated by our presence, and I was exasperated. How could we make them understand? How could we not get them to dismiss us out of hand? Eventually they headed back our way, their greyhound leading the pack, sniffing as he ran, while we tried to stand guard over a turtle searching for a spot to nest. An elderly gentleman followed the dog, commenting again that he had been walking and living there for years, he was always good to the turtles, the dog never bothers them, etc. So I tried something different.

‘Do you know there’s almost a zero per cent survival rate now for these turtles?’ I asked him.

His demeanour instantly shifted. Because he didn’t know that. How could he know? He wasn’t a scientist. And as a local he saw adult and baby turtles all the time. Everything was just the same as it’s always been.

What followed was a really good conversation, where we were no longer ‘annoying dog walker’ and ‘irritating turtle tracker’ but two people swapping information and stories. Turns out I knew some recent scientific info and data that he didn’t; whereas in all the years he’d lived there he’d saved far more baby turtles than I ever have or will.

It made me think about the three things you need for effective communication:

The right message

to the right person

at the right moment.

It looks so simple, but therein lies the rub. Within those three opportunities are thousands of ways for things to go wrong. For in each exchange where we want to deliver key information and understanding to someone else, whether it be a scientific forum, a personal argument, or in the scene of a novel, we have to (1) not only figure out the best thing to say, but (2) have someone in front of us who is, in that moment, receptive to hearing the message, and (3) for all this to occur in the right circumstances for that message to really hit home. No wonder it’s so difficult, and such an exciting and fascinating challenge for all of us who are consciously seeking effective ways to communicate in our work.

In that moment, on that day, with that man, I struck gold. It gave me hope and joy to have that conversation. We parted on good terms. He walked his dog home. I went to find the turtle we’d been following. But there was a microcosmic shift. And if we create enough of those, who knows what doors we might unlock, to find portals beyond them, instead of walls.