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A LITTLE HISTORY
Sea Turtles forever was started in October 2001 by Marc and Rachel Ward. Having spent a lot of time on the Nicoya Peninsula in the Pacific North West region of Costa Rica they saw first hand Sea Turtle nests being poached on many beaches. This eagerness to help stop Sea Turtle egg poaching was accepted and appreciated by Pretoma, a Costa Rican Sea Turtle and Shark conservation group led by Randall Arauz. With the encouragement and support of Mr. Arauz, Marc and Rachel began talking with everyone they came into contact with in America and Costa Rica about how important it is to help protect the Sea Turtles and their nests.
In the winter of 2003 Marc and Rachel went back to Costa Rica to a little beach town called Punta Pargos. This town is very small and has many local Costa Ricans as well as a wide variety of different nationalities who live there. As with any beach town fishing is a part of its economy and necessary for survival. There are a lot of fisherman who get up at day light and start walking the beach to go to work.
This is where the trouble begins. Sea Turtles come into the beach to nest on the high tide, usually after dark. In the morning fishermen or anyone else who wants sea turtle eggs walk the beach looking for the tracks that the sea turtle left behind in the sand. They follow the tracks up to the nest and with a long skinny stick poke into the sand until the end of the stick comes up with egg yoke on it. Then they dig up the nest of sea turtle eggs. Marc and Rachel talked with the poachers about not poaching the turtle eggs but the poachers would just laugh and dig up the nest while they were talking to them. It became apparent that for the time being the fishermen and other Punta Pargos Ticos (Costa Ricans) were going to have to be left out of the sea turtle nest protection loop until a solid program was in tact.
After trying a few different techniques Marc and Rachel discovered that simply camouflaging the freshly layed nested saved 100% of them from being poached, actually we have lost one out of one hundered. So far all of the nests except that one were never found by poachers. With the help of other volunteers Marc and Rachel get up about 2:30am and walk, ride bikes, ride motorcylcles or drive (if they were lucky enough to have access to a car) to get to the beach by 3:00am. Sometimes the group would split up and half would go to one beach while the other half went to another to try and head off the poachers. They take rakes or sticks and flashlights and look for new turtle crawls. Often times there would be no crawl and they would all go home and go back to bed until daylight. But, once every few days there would be a new crawl that had not been disturbed by poachers. When they found a new nest they would work like mad trying to rake the sea turtle tracks smooth and replace the high tide line so that when a poacher did walk by he would have no idea a sea turtle had ever been there. The patrollers always go back and check everyday just to make sure the nest is undisturbed. About 25 nests were saved between November and March 2003-2004 this way and all of them made it past the poachers.
Most of the poachers have no idea what effect they are having on the sea turtle population. In fact most are uneducated and have misguided beliefs about how sea turtles function. When a poacher digs up a nest they usually trade the eggs which are about 80-120 eggs per nest for about 3-4 beers at the local bar. The Leather back (one of the turtles very close to extinction) lays eggs that are about the size of tenis balls and apparently they taste bitter so if a poacher digs up a Leather back nest the eggs are useless and often get fed to their pigs.
Almost 100% of the sea turtle nests in Central and South America are poached unless they are protected. The governments of these countries are too poor to provide protection for most of the nesting beaches but many do have laws against sea turtle egg poaching. In Costa Rica the new law is three years in prison for poaching sea turtle eggs. Unfortunatly, there is very little law enforcement especially for something like sea turtle egg poaching. The poaching of Sea Turtle eggs has been in practice for centuries and is part of the Costa Rican culture. However, sea turtle egg poaching is a key factor in the declining number of sea turtles. The turtles that nest in Costa Rica are not strictly Costa Rican turtles they are the worlds sea turtles. For example, Leatherback sea turtles nests in Borneo as well as other counties but then follow the EIC current up to Oregon feeding on jelly fish and then they head south again. In the summer they can be found about 1-100 miles off the coast of Washington, Oregon and California. Another example is the Pacific Green, Olive Ridley and Leatherback sea turtles go on long food foraging runs thousands of miles from their nesting area.
There are five of the eight sea turtle species nesting on or around Punta Pargos. There are the Leatherback, the Pacific Green & Black, the Olive Ridley and the Hawksbill sea turtles. This is a very diverse group for such a small area.
The fisherman have reported a definate decline in the number of nests they come across today compared to 10 years go. In combination with the egg poaching the drag nets, longlineing and the shrimp boats there may soon be to few sea turtles left to sustain their species and in time they will go extinct. All of the sea turtles are on the threatened /endangerd species list. The Leatherback as well as the Hawksbill are very close to extinction.
Protection of sea turtles is vital to the worlds ecology. It is not limited to just the sea turtle nesting beaches.
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Sea Turtles Forever nest protection team. 2003, just starting our patrols.
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Black Sea Turtle after laying her nest, returning to the sea.
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Poachers use a stick to probe for the eggs. They poke and when they come up with egg yolk they dig out the nest. This nest was already stolen when we got here.
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Rachel Ward tending to the hachlings at Caletas Sea Turtle Hatchery.
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