The reality behind wanting to save sea turtles

Buenos,

I hope you have all finishing reading the previous report from last week. (If not, first read that one and next time try to keep up!!)

Well, as promised, today I’ll write you about the reality behind saving turtles. Like every volunteer and tourist, I arrived here last week, hoping to see some turtles laying their eggs at the beach, helping to collect a lot of turtle eggs and especially help getting the new born turtle babies get into the sea safely. Unfortunately there are a lot of misunderstandings behind the process and there’s a lot of boring and exhausting work behind that idyllic picture.

Sea turtles put their eggs always at night, preferably at high tide. This means that saving the nests is always happening at a time I really should be sleeping, anywhere between 10pm and 05am. Some patrols only last a few hours but a week ago I had several night patrols lasting from 01am until 06am. While walking along the beach, it’s not allowed to put a white light as that will distract the turtles. During my first patrol I discovered that my red light is not very bright so I actually couldn’t see a lot. Luckily after a few times I got used to the poor sight and could start distinguishing the wood logs and branches from the sand on the beach, and also the slightly different sand colour where a turtle had been walking. Whenever we found such a trail, we followed it slowly inland; on a few occasions we saw the turtle actually being busy making her nest or putting the eggs. The first time I saw that, was very special and emotional. Also impressive because an average turtle nest contains between 80 and 100 eggs!

Most of the times there was no turtle anymore, which can indicate several options; in the most positive scenario the turtle has finished her nest, got back into the ocean and the nest is still intact. Often though there was no nest, probably because the turtle got disturbed by some animal, movement or white light from a car or house and just went back into the ocean. The third and worst case posibility though is that there was a nest but the nest is destroyed. At night there are a lot of racoons (attracked by the food people leave near their house or on the beach) and other predator animals (like house dogs walking free on these protected areas of the beach). And there are many poachers here in Costa Rica who steal the eggs from the nests and sell them.

Turtles eggs have been a delicacy in these countries for many years and although now it is officially illegal to collect and sell the eggs, many poor people still keep on doing it. And many people believe there’s some afrodisiacum or longevity supporting substance in the eggs, so they will still eat it.

So there are many reasons while these turtle nests need protection from getting destroyed. And walking at night at the beach is not without danger. There are several small rivers ending at the beach and after a heavy rainfall, there might be soms crocodiles hanging around there, waiting for soms fish, small animals or a nice human leg they can feed on.

Next to the poachers trying to steal the eggs, there’s also the posibility of drugscartels hanging around at the beach and you don’t want to get too close to them. That’s why on some parts of the beach we can also go in company of National Park security Rangers or Police Coastguards.

When we do find an intact turtle nest, we preferably dig up the nest so we can transfer the eggs to the hatchery where it’s suppost to be safe from humans and animals. The eggs are soft shelled and very fragile which means that you can only touch them very gentle with alcohol cleaned hands (and the alcohol has to be evaporated and washed off with clean beach sand). The eggs need to be transported in soft bags that are free of chemicals or micro-organisms. The bags can get heavy after walking with them for a while but may only be put down once you are at the hatchery or in specific cases also on clean sand from the intermareal area (area between low and high tide).

The hatchery used to be just a place on the beach close to where we stay, marked by bamboo sticks and patrolled by anyone around to make sure no one enters the hatchery. New research has changed to rules for hatcheries though. Bamboo wood is not strong enough and might contains micro-organisms like fungi after being used for several months. Ants and other insects can also infect the eggs, so the hatchery must have special protection tissues that avoid insects from getting in. The sand used in the hatchery must be free of stones, roots, insects etc. The hatchery must be built away from artificial light and be protected from real high tides coming in and transporting wood and human-made debris towards it. It also has to be close to the place where most turtles nest. All these new requirements meant that the new hatchery had to be build away from the refuge where we stay and close to a habitated suburb of the drugstown Jaco. For us to get there, means driving for almost 40 minutes, of which 20 minutes crossing 3 km of dirt road in very bad conditions. (the road is not owned by the government and the people owning the road and the houses along it don’t want to get it fixed). The shorter way would be walking along the beach but there’s a big river in between full of crocodiles so that’s not a safe option.

Once the first eggs are buried in that hatchery, there must be 24/7 guarding to avoid animals and humans trying to get it. Officially the foundation has local volunteers living close, who take that responsibility. In practice, many of these volunteers cancel their shift all of a sudden, or don’t really do their job and just hang around at the beach. A week ago, when we entered the hatcherry at night, ready to bury soms fresh eggs, we discovered a racoon had just come in and destroyed a whole nest (luckily only one, because in 30 minutes it could have destroyed all the nests that were inside).

Last week there were hardly any local volunteers to guard the hatchery, so we as international volunteers had to be there in shifts the whole week. We were supposted to do the shifts by 2 people, but some volunteers got a bit sick so eventually it turned out I had to do most shifts by myself. Especially during the night shifts (it’s dark here between 5pm and 5am) it’s a hard and boring job. There is very bad internet reception, there’s no toilet, electricity or running water there. We have to be outsite, close to the hatchery and checking for animals every few minutes. On one of these nightshifts I saw 4 racoon and 1 possum within 2 hours, so at least my presence was usefull that night. Also at any time during day and night. There will arrive so people by car or foot. The beach near the hatchery and parking area are closed to public, but as some people use the isolated place to sell drugs, it recommended to not talk to them but just call the police. (which is difficult if you have no phone reception and the police would come anyway, while they have bigger drugsproblems to solve at nights).

During the day shifts we had another challenge. The edges of the hatchery are protected and stabilised with sand bags, plastic bags filled with beach sand. Unfortunately on one side of the hatchery, all of a sudden many of these bags got torn open. Probably some person walked over the bags, which shouldn’t be a problem normally, but the plastic appeared to be completely deteriorated and was falling apart completely. As the sand in the hatchery has to be completely free of plastic, this means we have to get all these plastic particles out of there. There is no money to rent a shovel and just remove all the contaminated sand (and what can you do with all that sand; you don’t want the plastic particles getting into the ocean or somewhere in nature!)

So I have been trying several ways to get the least amount of contaminated sand;

-mixing the sand with seawater didn’t work, half of the plastic didn’t float

-putting the sand through a big metal sieve didn’t work, the plastic broke down into even small pieces and went through.

-using a kitchen sieve gave some positive results, I could separate more plastic but not the smaller parts (of which the ocean is completely filled up these days)

-using a linen bag after that made me get most of the plastic out, but still not everything.

Knowing this, now I have to start cleaning the sand that I separated already (about 10% of the whole area). That will take a few days so I probably won’t be able to finish it, as this week is my last week at the turtle project.

As you might start to understand, protecting turtles requires a lot more than just going to the beach and release some turtle hatchlings. Still this is what most tourists see and do when they come to Costa Rica during hatchling season. Many people here collect turtle eggs by them self, put them in the ground at the beach in front of their house or company, wait 50 days for the turtles to hatch and them let people pay a lot of money so they can come to the beacht at daylight and each hold one babyturtle which they can put at the sea ridge. The chance of these turtles to survive is almost zero! Why?

-The eggs in these nests are buried with bare hands without taking protection so the eggs are contaminated and many of the eggs won’t develop properly.

-Baby turtles always hatch at night, and than need some time to orientate themselves so they know where they are and can come back years later to lay their own eggs. They use the time to digest the last food left in the egg and gain the strength to go towards the sea.

-Waiting to release them until the tourists arrive causes them to get desorientated by the daylight, not having enough strenght anymore to survive the first day in the sea, having many birds and reptiles around that can eat them the moment they get into the sea.

-Putting the turtles directly at sea ridge means they miss the time to orientate so they can come back later to lay their eggs.

-You really mix up natural selection. A nest of 100 eggs normally means around 80 turtles coming out alive. Some of them are blind or otherwise physically injured and won’t make it to the sea. These are the ones that predators normally take so the healthy ones get more change to survive.

-Last but not least, the babies are very vulnerable and direct contact with human hands or other unnatural substances will harm them.

As you see, I learned a lot these weeks about what’s right and wrong when trying to save turtles and the necessary work requires a lot of boring night work, ruined biorhythm, continuously changing plans caused by heavy weather and failing volunteers and living a primitive life because there’s no money to do things the easy or efficient way. And after all my work, I haven’t seen one baby turtle yet (all the problems above meant we only started the actual burying of the eggs in the hatchery 2 weeks ago). I am happy I could do my part and helping this small not profit foundation, I have learned a lot but it’s been some though weeks.

In one week I will start my next project at Rescate Animal rescue centre. That’s gonna be a whole new and different experience again, but for sure, not so much nightwork and much more actually working with the animals themselves.

I realise this report has been more serious than the previous ones, but yeah, that’s life sometimes. Have a great time and I’ll be back in a few weeks.