Meeting a sea turtle in the water, or on land, is a special moment.
When Earthwatch invited me to join their sea turtle expedition, working alongside biologists,
well, who wouldn't jump at the opportunity?
I first met Nathan Robinson, Field Director for the Leatherback Trust.
When monitoring here first started, back in 1988, when there was 1,500 animals nesting per year,
the international community and the scientific community had the data to prove this site,
Plagrande, which was the largest leatherback turtle nesting sites in the world,
but they also had the data to prove the population was declining.
Why sea turtles? Why not Costa Rica?
They're charismatic, they're so cool and so mysterious and there's so much to learn from them.
Unlike some species that have changed really dramatically in recent decades,
turtles have pretty much been the way turtles are forever.
And there's just something captivating about them.
As a kid, like so many kids, I was obsessed with dinosaurs growing up and
this is the nearest thing you really get to working with a living dinosaur today,
is sea turtles and in particular the Leatherback Turtle.
Within hours of landing, we were all treated to rare, daytime nestings by two olive-ridley sea turtles.
The day in the life of a biologist at home, Plagrande, is pretty variable.
We are walking and patrolling looking for nesting sea turtles and we're looking for
nesting females who are emerging so that we can get their tagging information,
which is the most important part of this whole project,
because that's how we know what the population is out there.
It's very difficult to protect a species unless you know how many there are.
You can quantify how many turtles, then you can start to quantify how important
the different beaches are for the different species.
And then you can get the appropriate level of conservation.
And then they also get what's called a pit tag.
It's the same thing that you get put in your dog or your cat.
So now I can scan her and she has a number.
And that's going to stay in her for the rest of her life.
We also relocate nests if they're doomed.
I actually think she might be realizing something's a little bit wrong.
She's starting to slow down with her dignity.
Is that okay where she's wanting to lay the eggs though?
No, it's not.
See, turtle eggs, like chicken eggs need to breathe.
So if they're laid in water, if too much water rushes over them,
those eggs are going to drown.
So it's really important that the turtle lays in the dry sand
if she's not going to put them there herself.
We collect those eggs and relocate them to a beach hatchery.
The work we do here in Paracore National now and we're in the last part of this
is really to maximize hatching success.
How old are you?
78.
We want the leatherback turtles and the olive release and the black turtles that nest here.
We want to make sure that every single nest they lay,
every single egg they lay, has the best chance of survival
until it basically hits the water.
Working alongside the biologist is an education.
There's nothing like hands-on experience.
I'd say our day really kicks off at night.
You patrol three hours before and three hours after high tide.
So sea turtles generally nest at night.
The sand's a lot cooler, so it's a little bit more comfortable to call up at night,
but also there's fewer predators that can kind of nest under the safety of darkness.
Lights tend to spook sea turtles, so we don't use white lights in the beach.
We never use flash photography or anything like that.
In fact, all the work we do is under red light,
and that's because sea turtles don't see very well in the red end of the spectrums.
I did happen to be fortunate enough very first night.
You know, it's like, get off the plane, you're coming down to do these things
with the earth watch activities, show up on the beach, and the turtle comes.
It's like presto.
We had a leatherback that was laying eggs in her nest chamber she had dug.
You became involved in the experience and the environment,
and the danger to the leatherbacks is so extreme that it's like every little bit of help
you can possibly give them might be the salvation of the species.
Every now and then, a sea turtle might emerge in the daytime,
and luckily we've had a leatherback which is incredibly rare.
We haven't had a daytime-nesting leatherback for at least three years on this project now.
Since we started monitoring, we started monitoring back in 1988.
The population of eastern Pacific leatherback turtles has declined by about 98%.
In the first few years of monitoring, we're encountering about 1,500 animals per nesting season.
On the beaches where we work, we now encounter somewhere between 20 and 30.
She had already either laid her nests or was looking for a new location to lay her nests,
and now she started camouflaging.
Okay, and this is the same turtle we saw in what, how do we do that now?
She is a return turtle, so she has been back.
Yeah, you stand here, then you stand.
Yep.
The threats that are really killing off the leatherback turtles right now,
the threats of fisheries by-catch, plastic pollution, climate change,
these aren't localized threats, and they're not just affecting the leatherback turtle,
they're really going to affect the vast majority of life in the Pacific Ocean.
Limit your plastic use, like plastic bags, straws, forks.
We've had a couple biologists who've had to pull straws and forks out of turtles' noses
because they get in their mouths and they try to cough them up and they get stuck in their nose.
Be conscious about the kind of fish that you eat because these guys get stuck in fishing nets.
And she's got, if you look, she's got a scar down her back,
so she's probably getting by a boat or something.
Ultimately, we can protect the beaches as all we want,
but fishing is the biggest pressure that's causing the dependency turtles to end.
The daytime leatherback that we saw today, that is so rare.
The details to see things on their shells, if something has happened to them,
a scar or things of that sort, it's so emotional.
And the verse that comes from some song is that it's more beautiful than the spoken word can tell.
It's just, it's like, I can't believe it.
It's what an experience to have.
This species can be considered the canary in the coal mine.
If we're seeing this happen to leatherback turtles,
this is just an indicator of what else is going on in the Pacific Ocean to countless other species.
Considering the Eastern Pacific as one of the most biologically productive areas in the world,
can tell you that there's something else going on.
It's not just the food.
It's not just the distribution of the oceans.
It's not just natural processes that are happening.
Because if that were true, then we would see turtles all over the world fading.
When the project was first started, poaching was absolutely rampant in the area
and from kind of anecdotal information.
We estimate that poaching from the 1970s to around the early 1990s
was taking 90% or more of all the sea turtle eggs that were laid on this beach.
So ever since I've been on this project, I've been,
I've heard so much about this lady, Dona Esperanza,
who really was the champion of sea turtles.
She was one of the first people down here who really got people
protecting the sea turtles and started transforming these poachers
into sustainable champions for conservation.
The vast majority of poachers we see aren't young kids.
The older generation who've been doing this since they were kids.
If you spoke to someone from the US or the UK
and asked if they were ever considered eating sea turtle eggs,
most of them would probably rinse and say no.
That's the exact same response you get from the vast majority of Costa Ricans nowadays.
So in the big ways that the local community now plays a role in conservation
is they run sustainable sea turtle tours at night.
While we'll go to the turtle and collect the data and relocate the nest if we need to,
they'll bring paying tourists to come see the animals
and they get to have a beautiful experience
and they also provide a local income source
to the local people and support for the national park.
People will protect what they love and people love what they know.
So I think it gives them the opportunity to fall in love with this animal
and that's what we need.
Recently we've also discovered that hatchlings talk,
actually communicate, they make little chirps both in the egg
and just after they've hatched.
And one of the purposes could be that they're still hatching, chatting to each other,
saying like, I'm awake, I'm ready to go, let's start climbing.
And that could be another way that they synchronized their emergence.
Our best estimates in the moment are that leatherback turtles
reach sexual maturity somewhere between 20 to 30 years.
So every single night when we go out on the beach as biologists and as volunteers,
I'm always filled with this optimism, this idea that this is the day when the recovery starts,
this is the day when all those sea turtle hatchlings that were saved
by the ending of poaching back with the establishment of the national park,
they're coming and there'll be 10, 15, 20, 100 new turtles coming out
and that'll be the recovery for the population.
The goal of every single conservation project is at one point to turn around and say,
job achieved, species saved, let's move on to the next problem.
There's countless scientists fighting countless fights all around the world
and a species like the leatherback turtle is so inspirational
it captures the imaginations of so many people that the story of how we've already lost 98%
of our individuals in this population so far could provide a wake-up call,
start really getting us into a more economically friendly and sustainable future.
An early morning stroll puts things in the proper perspective.
What an inspiring experience to be an earth watch citizen scientist for nine days.
Being here showed me how committed individuals can make a difference.
They'll continue to come here all the time.
