I volunteered at a turtle rescue on the Pacuare Reserve. Pacuare is on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica between the cities of Limon and Tortuguero. To travel there from San Jose, I needed to take a bus, a taxi, and then finally a water taxi. Pacuare is a very remote location where you never know if you will have water, electricity, or internet on a daily basis. It has a very beautiful beach paired with a lush jungle. The volunteer organization I dedicated my time to, focused mainly on Leatherback Turtles. These turtles are technically not endangered but on the vulnerable list. Before explaining my volunteer experience, I would love to share information about Leatherback Turtles.
Leatherback Turtles are named after their special shell which is not hard like the majority of other turtles. They are the most migratory turtle species as they cross both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans. Leatherback Turtles can be found throughout the world. The population of Leatherback Turtles has been declining due to two reasons. Reason one being many poachers sell eggs they find on the beach. Reason two being fisheries often catch Leatherback Turtles in shrimp trawl nets and fish gill nets. Since Leatherback Turtles need air to breathe, they often die underwater when captured within these nets. Leatherback Turtles are important to the environment because their main diet is jellyfish, so they help keep the jellyfish population in check. Because plastic bags often look like jellyfish, Leatherback Turtles will often eat plastic that cannot be digested by their body also causing them to perish.
Nesting season for Leatherback Turtles in Costa Rica is between March and June. Males can mate every year, but females only mate once every 3 years. The female is responsible for finding a safe place for the nest and laying their eggs. Many turtles nest within 5-30 miles from where they hatched themselves. When nesting the female walks onto the beach and digs an egg chamber with its rear flippers. Then the female lays 80-120 eggs in the egg chamber. Female Leatherback Turtles nest 5-7 times after mating. Only 50-60% of eggs laid on average will hatch. One in one-thousand turtles will survive to adulthood due to predators in the ocean or air.
My first hatchery shift was on the second day that I arrived at the Pacuare Reserve. I was scheduled for the shift at night from 8 pm – 12 am. I needed to walk the 1 kilometer in the jungle by myself to arrive at the hatchery. Most of the animals in the jungle are nocturnal so my walk was full of eyes from frogs, lizards, spiders, and snakes. I almost ran into a large spider that was dangling at the level of my face from the branch above. I would be lying if I said that I was not scared I would step on an animal in the dark. I was focusing my eyes on the trail and almost didn’t see the spider right in front of my very own eyes.
Once I got to the hatchery, my friend Julia was there waiting for the end of her shift. We looked at the one turtle nest that was about to hatch and nothing seemed abnormal at this time. There was a small hole in the sand by the netting, but we saw a crab make this hole earlier in the day. Julia and I chatted for about 10 minutes regarding her four-hour shift. We decided to check the nest one more time before Julia left. We saw a large area of sand had sunk directly next to the crab hole or burrow. My first thought was the crab burrow had loosened the sand causing it to collapse. There was no other movement from the sand at this point. Julia was excited and thought this was worthy of telling the others. She took off running down the jungle trail, but not before I warned her about the large hanging spider at eye level.
Now I was sitting alone in the dark with a random hole in the ground. I turned on my red light for a little more investigation. Red light is important to use with hatching turtles so as to not confuse them about what direction the ocean is. Turtles use white light as their compass to guide them to the ocean. I took my hand and did a light sweep over the top of the hole. To my surprise, I saw what I thought was the head of one turtle. Mind you everything was entirely covered with sand. I sat and watched for a few more minutes. Now I saw many heads and flippers starting to move. At first, their movement was slight making me think I may just be imagining this all. With time, their movements increased in rate. I decided to put on a pair of gloves and move the turtles from the sand hole to 2 different plastic pails. There were so many turtles. I couldn’t believe that so many turtles could be together in such a small area. I was afraid that the turtles may hurt each other, but that was not the case. Once the turtles were in the pails, they started to try and make their walk to the ocean, but they were stuck. This constant movement helped remove the sand from the baby turtles. I was taking a few videos of the turtles when Julia came running into the hatchery. She told me that the others would be coming shortly. I’m glad Julia alerted everyone because I had truly thought this was just a false alarm. We had about 30 full minutes with just us and the turtles before everyone from the camp was able to walk to the hatchery. These 30 minutes were full of pure joy. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Mother nature sure had amazing gifts in store for us on this day.
Headlights and flashlights could be seen along the jungle trail. As other volunteers got close, I started to hear voices and shouts of excitement. Volunteers and workers came into to hatchery with just as much surprise as I did when first seeing the little baby tortugas. One of the volunteer assistants got right to work in the sand next to the turtles. Ten of the turtles needed to be weighed and their shell width and length needed to be measured. All data was recorded. We then counted the turtles. At this time 56 out of the 65 eggs had hatched. The assistant took the pails and then we headed to the beach for the turtles to be released into the ocean. A walk on the sand to start their entire life. For male turtles, this would be the only time they walk on land in their lifetime.
The volunteer assistant drew a line in the sand. All volunteers were asked to stay behind this line. The turtles hatched at night when it was dark, which is normal. We all needed to stay behind the line to not mistakenly step on the baby turtles in the dark. With their small flippers, it seemed like the sand walk of eternity until the first baby got to the ocean. Some baby turtles started walking toward the jungle and others parallel with the ocean. The volunteer assistant needed to use red light to help the turtles find where they needed to go. One lone turtle took 10 minutes longer than the others to get to the ocean. Taking Darwinism into account, I’m not sure how long that particular turtle will survive in the ocean. However, we made sure that all of the turtles that hatched made it to the ocean so they all had a fair shot of surviving.
The volunteers all needed to continue the hatchery shifts until 4 pm the following day to make sure no other turtles would hatch from the nest. At 4 pm the volunteers gathered at the hatchery to go through the nest. This entailed looking for broken eggshells, eggs that did not fully develop, and unfertilized eggs (which are significantly smaller). We would also be looking to see if some fully grown turtles did not survive the hatching process. At 4 pm we discovered that one more turtle was able to hatch from the nest. That meant 57 out of 65 eggs within the nest hatched successfully. Before releasing the solo turtle into the ocean, we dug up the nest finding 1. a few unfertilized eggs, 2. one egg that did not hatch but was in the final stage of development, and 3. a fully developed turtle that had died. You can view the pictures below. This experience will always be one that I will remember in my lifetime. I encourage you to volunteer with sea turtles or other endangered species around the world. If you are looking for volunteer opportunities around the world, please visit VolunteerWorld.com.
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