I wish I was a better writer, so that I could capture better in words my extraordinary experience at Caño Palma Biological Station. When I was planning my 3-month trip, I wanted to incorporate maybe a week or so doing something I have never done before, and I found this volunteering opportunity with COTERC (www.coterc.org) in Lonely Planet doing “marine turtle conservation” work. COTERC is a non-profit organization from Canada which operates this biological station at Cano Palmer near Tortuguero, on the northern Caribbean coast in Costa Rica. Tortuguero is a growing tourist destination famous for its national park with immense biodiversity in wildlife, especially the marine turtles who nest on its miles and miles of beach, as well as the lush tropical rain forests surrounding the coastal area. There is no road access to Tortuguero, so one has to take a motor boat through a network of canals and rivers from the closest town where you can take a bus to. The total travel time from the capital San Jose to Cano Palmer is about 5 tours. The 45 min or so boat ride set the tone for my next 12 days at the station, as I was marveling at the jungles surrounding the canals with the sounds of the various birds and insects in the background, and the hot sun along with the high humidity.
Josh, the station manager, welcomed me at the dock. The first thing I said according to him was: this place is quite remote indeed! LOL. I did not know ahead of time what exactly I would be doing at the station for the “conservation work”, but unlike my other volunteering experience in Guatemala, I will soon find out that the station is very well organized and my time there will be spent doing meaningful work. Josh took me for a tour of the station, which consists of various buildings including a dorm where I sleep in bunkbeds in large rooms, a kitchen with dining area, a small library/conference building, a hut for showers/laundry on the other side, some other living quarters for staffs, and toilets. The structures are all very basic, and there is no A/C, no hot water at showers and no TV either, but what else do you need?? Outside of the compound are jungles with trails, and you can find all kinds of animals including birds, frogs, even monkeys. The monkeys (both howler monkeys and spider monkeys) like to hang out close to the compound actually, and we see them everyday. There are usually 20+ people from GVI, a partner organization of COTERC, which runs these 5-week or 10-week long “expeditions” doing the same turtle monitoring and conservation work, but I was there under COTERC during their 2-week-between-expeditions period (or so-called “interface”) where volunteers are desperately needed. So besides me, there are 4 other volunteers during “interface”. Also there is April who’s working on her PhD research on marine turtles, and she has been living at the station since February.
Josh and April went through with us powerpoint presentations about marine turtles in general, about the program objectives, and the different protocols for the patrol walks and excavations on the beach. Basically, every night there are 2 patrol teams that set out to walk our beach, Playa Norte, to monitor any turtle nesting activities. There are 4 species of marine turtles which nest on our beach, including the leatherback, hawksbill, green and loggerhead. The beach is 3 1/8 miles long, and we walk up and down for 4 hours, and the 2 teams overlapped so that we cover the peak time for nesting which is about 11pm – 12am. The PM1 team will walk from 8:30pm to 12:30pm and then PM2 team will go from 11pm to 3am. I will go into more details later what we do when we encounter a turtle. Then in the morning there is another walk call the Morning Census, and the purpose of the MC is mostly for monitoring any nests that are hatched (with hatchlings coming out) and also to confirm if there are any more nesting activities since the PM2 walk. MC starts early @ 5am but we only need to walk the beach once and it takes about 2 hours. So there is a whiteboard in the kitchen and our names are assigned for each day to PM1 or PM2 and typically PM1 people will also do the MC walk and then you only get 4 hours of sleep in between. However, during the day you are free to do whatever, so I have typically slept in till fairly late around 11am, and then just lounge around and read, or go kayaking in the canals, or do my laundry!
My first turtle encounter was actually during an excavation on my 2nd day there. So when night walk people encounter a mother turtle laying eggs, or found a new nest (with Ma turtle gone already), they mark down the GPS of the nest, and then come back after their 60-70 days of incubation period (depending on the species). That’s when the nest is supposed to hatch, so the morning census people will make a note to check those nests during their walks, and usually the timing is within a day or two of the expected date. If a nest hatched, baby turtles will crawl out and run for the sea at night time but it’s very hard to see that in action, and usually we just see the baby turtle tracks in the morning afterwards. Sometimes however, a nest might never hatch, and that’s because the eggs inside the nest are all dead. So part of the data we collect in an excavation is how many eggs hatched in a nest and what stage the eggs were in if they didn’t make it. We do the excavation either a few days after a nest is known to have hatched, or 5 or 7 days after the due date for a “dead” nest. This was all very confusing to me when I first started but slowly it all came together. This excavation I was part of was for a hatched nest. Usually the egg chamber is about ½ meter to 1 meter deep. Courtney, a fellow volunteer from Vancouver, was digging this one by hand, while I helped with sorting the eggs, while April was taking the tallies on her notebook. This one was a Leatherback Turtle nest and their success rate is typically lower than some other species. We found some more or less complete egg shells where hatchlings come out from, and some intact eggs (they are the size of a pool table ball I’d say) that never hatched. After we dug all the eggs out, we opened one by one the “dead” eggs and see what’s inside, whether its stage 1, 2, 3 or 4 in terms of the development of the embryo. We saw many Stage 4 eggs in this nest, which are almost fully developed turtles still with the egg yoke attached to their bellies, but somehow just didn’t make it. Sometimes there is fungus that went into the eggs and it’s all smelly and mushy inside. Sometimes there are maggots too and those are just gross. There are also yokeless eggs which the Leatherback lay for unknown reason. Sometimes you come across live hatchling in the egg chamber, and that’s what happened in our excavation! The little guy would not have made it out if we didn’t excavate the nest. He was so tiny he fits into my palm. Since it is day time with the sun and the heat, the baby turtle can dehydrate very quickly and die, so we had to release him into the sea right away. April took the hatchling and lowered him to have a few gulps of sea water (and to wake him up!) and after he became more active, she released and let him go! Josh brought his video camera so he took some footage of the little guy. He’s so cute with his front flippers that are almost as long as his shell! Little did I know that live hatchling in a nest is not something you come across every day so we have been very lucky to witness that.
My lucky star continued to shine on me, and on my 4th day there I went on my first walk – a morning census with the GVI people. The sky was just starting to lit up at around 4:45am. The GVI folks were leaving the next day after completing their 10 week expedition, so the 4 girls in this walk were quite sentimental. Some of them have not seen a live hatchling yet, so when we checked on this hatched nest at the other end of the beach, they were screaming in joy when we found a few baby turtles still in the nest! They were thrilled and said it was the best morning census ever. The little hatchlings were still struggling to get out of the egg chamber and after a while we could see there were 5 of them in total. Usually when a nest hatches, all the hatchlings come out at the same time at night, and they help each other along the way. These 5 were left behind but they still helped each other pushing with their front flippers and loosening the sand – so full of life! I felt like I’m watching National Geographic or something but I’m actually there just inches away from the action! We watched in amazement, took tones of pictures/videos, and congratulated ourselves with our luck, and finally the first one came loose and started dashing across the beach towards the water. He moved very quickly, and made the little tracks on the sand like a little tank - so cute! We stayed to watch until the last little guy (or gal) made it into the water and we were there for probably an hour and a half at least. There were 5 hatchlings and we had 5 people in the MC walk so we each got to name our hatchling, hah, I think I called mine Gracie. I hope they all have a good life, spend their “lost years” safely in the open ocean, and come back some day (if they are female of course) to nest on this same beach 20 years or so later. Go baby turtles, Go!
I had my first night walk the same day after the morning census, a PM2, with Josh and Courtney. Courtney arrived at the station a few days before me and she already walked 2 nights but had not seen anything yet. They kept saying I was the lucky charm so we would definitely see something. Before each night walk, the team gathers maybe 30 min earlier to go through all the kits to make sure we don’t miss everything, and go through what each of us will do if we encounter a nesting turtle. We have a triangulation kit with markers and measuring tape for locating a nest. Then we have a tagging kit, which the patrol leader will use to tag a turtle if it hasn’t been tagged before. Then we have an egg counting / nest relocation kit which includes some latex gloves, plastic bag. Also we always bring a notebook to take down general data for the walk as well as specific data if we encounter turtles. It was very dark at the beach at 11pm, but we were not supposed to walk with our headlamps (with red film over the bulb since red light is preferred over white light) on as any kind of light will affect these potential nesting turtles. We will use the red light only while working the turtles. The route was to walk from Mile marker zero, to the end which they call Laguna Cuatro at 3 1/8 mile, then come back half way to about 1.5 miles, and go back up to Laguna Cuatro, then finally walk all the way back to zero, Total about 10 miles. Even though it’s very warm we wear long sleeves pants and shirts because of the horrendous sand flies. All the time we would be looking for any turtle tracks on the sand. I was wondering how I could see anything in the dark, but slowly my eyes adjusted and I could walk along the beach without tripping over logs as they actually stand out quite distinctively. We walk typically bare feet along the waters edge where the sand is firmer and easier to walk on, so our pant legs are all wet. And then still on our first 3 1/8 miles, Josh spotted tracks! Now I realized how the tracks are not subtle at all and one could not miss them! The depressions made in the wetter sand by the turtle’s flippers contrast quite well with the dry sand. We came across what is known as a “half moon”, which is when a turtle comes up, looks for a place but does not like it, and go back into the water without laying eggs. It was a leatherhead turtle as seen from the track patterns. The tracks look like to me one made by a tank, with a distance of about a meter between left and right side – so big!! I could see by following the tracks this turtle made a big circle and went back down into the water. For a halfmoon, we only take the GPS and then we covered up the tracks so another team will not duplicate the findings. Halfmoons are still good because this turtle will definitely come back sooner or later to lay her eggs! That was the only observation for the night, and towards the end my legs, especially my hamstrings, were getting quite sore. I have been warned about how strenuous it is to walk on sand, but I just had to suck it up as we will be walking every night until I leave the station on June 20!
I have been very lucky indeed, as I saw my first nesting turtle on my next night walk!! I was again with Josh and Courtney, the team that kicks ass. =) Josh spotted it very early on the walk, and Courtney and I were soooo excited and we wanted to scream! We had to keep it down since we don’t want to disturb the turtle. It’s a leatherback again, and when we found her she’s digging the body pit which is the first stage of digging. Josh decided that this nest was too close to the high tide line so we would have to relocate it to further up away from the water. In this case, we don’t have to count the eggs as they are being laid, but rather, we are going to get the plastic bag underneath to catch the eggs, and I have been assigned to that duty. I had to go right up to the turtle and dig out enough sand adjacent to her pit so there is enough room in preparation to get the plastic bag full of eggs out from under her after she’s finished and before covering up the nest. As I got closer, I was simply stunned by the sheer size of this animal. It took her a while digging the egg chamber using her back flippers, and once she started laying eggs, I scrambled to put the bag underneath her cloaca (the hole where eggs also come out from, same hole for no. 1 and no. 2). I had to push one of her back flippers away and she’s so sturdy. I was lying on my stomach on the sand and reaching out with the plastic bag in an awkward position. I was thinking at the same time, “geez, look at what I’m doing! This is so cool! Hee hee.” Some of the eggs at the beginning actually didn’t make it into the bag so Courtney came to the rescue and reached into the egg chamber to fetch those. Like April has told us in the presentation, the turtles lay their eggs like 1, 2, 3….pause, 1, 2, 3…. Pause. Our turtle made little sounds, but sometimes you would hear a grunt which sounded quite funny to me for some reason. It would be hard to count the eggs, accurately at least, if this wasn’t going to be a relocated nest. So finally she stopped and quickly we pulled the bag filled with at least 60-70 eggs out of the chamber before she started covering up the nest with sand again. While we were doing all this, we had to keep an eye out for any flashlights coming towards us on the beach because there is a possibility they can be poachers, and they might watch us and dig up the nest later for the eggs, so we don’t want to see anyone really. Luckily that night we saw nobody else. As the turtle was covering up the chamber, we started to collect other data, including measuring her carapace (shell) length and width, and Josh checked the tags on her flippers and marked down the numbers, and any other observations. The carapace length for my first turtle was 150cm, almost as tall as me! After that’s all done, Courtney and I stayed to watch the turtle while Josh went up a little further to relocate the nest. He had to dig a pit, count the eggs, cover it up, and triangulate the location and mark it all down on the notebook. The turtle after filling the chamber with sand would then disguise the nest, which is to make a big mess in the sand in the immediate area so it will be hard for others to pinpoint the exact location of the nest. The beach was dark except for the stars, with the sound of crashing waves a little ways down, and right next to us was this silluette of an enormous turtle splashing sand around. After a short while she headed back down the beach towards the water. She moved fairly quickly, with brief pauses, and there she went into the water, and disappeared. The entire encounter was unreal, but this last moment before she returned to sea was almost magical and I could not believe what I just saw.
Over the next 7 nights, I continued to walk many more miles on the beach in the middle of the night with my team. I looked forward to the walk every night, even though some nights we wouldn’t see anything. Those nights were not as exciting of course, but still fun simply because I was part of the team and had a mission: conservation of marine turtles which are critically endangered. I will always remember the peacefulness I felt as I strolled down the beach, looking at the Milky Way above us and having good conversations with my patrol team. It was a different world, and I was so grateful being able to be there. At the end I had a total of 5 nesting turtle encounters (2 leatherbacks and 3 hawksbills), and saw a few more live hatchlings.
I was pretty sad when it was time to leave the station and head back to San Jose to catch my flight back home to the Bay Area. I thought I would be excited to go home finally after three months of travelling, but actually there was this emptiness I felt. I remember I was looking at my watch on the plane as night fell, and thinking about that night's patrol walk, which I would miss. The two weeks I spent at Cano Palma was definitely the highlight of my Centro/South America adventure. If you have two weeks or even just one week of time in September, and want to work with these amazing sea turtles on a tropical beach in Costa Rica, check out www.coterc.org/volunteer.html, I promise you will have an have an experience of a lifetime.
