In the coastal town of Ostional, located on Costa Rica's Guanacaste Peninsula, a 13-year-old project has helped stabilize the population of the olive ridley sea turtle.
For 10 months of the year, usually around the third quarter of the moon, olive ridleys swim by the hundreds of thousands to a single mile of beach at Ostional in an ancient reproductive rite little understood by scientists. They scuttle onto the sand, dig a hole with their flippers, and drop in an average of100 leathery, white eggs the size of ping pong balls. Over the course of afive-day "arribada," literally, an arrival, nesting females will leave as many as10 million eggs in the black, volcanic sand. Mass nesting is nature's way of ensuring that after the turkey vultures, feral dogs and raccoons have eaten all the fresh eggs they want, there will be enough left over to produce a sustainable population of olive ridleys.
In the early 1980s, scientists learned that because of limited space on the beach, females arriving later destroy the first laid eggs. The researchers wondered: why not let poachers have the doomed eggs?
Under a law written especially for Ostional, the government allows an egg harvesting cooperative to collect all they can during the first 36 hours of every arribada. Coop members then truck the eggs around the country, selling them to bars and restaurants. In return, the community must protect the olive ridley. Coop members clean debris from the nesting areas and patrol the beach day and night for poachers. Forty days later, when the hatchlings emerge, children from the Ostional Primary school run to the beach.
"We protect the tortugitas when they crawl to the ocean. If we don't, the vultures will get them and bite their heads off," says a local 8-year-old boy, breathlessly.
On 10/15/2010 8:06 AM, Keith In Tampa wrote:
Is this really taking place down there Mark?? What are the eggs used for?? Food?
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 11:29 PM, Daniel Seigler <danielseigler@hotmail.com> wrote:
haven't verified on my own, but the pics look convincing to me.--
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 22:04:21 -0400
From: Subject: FW: Why sea turtles are in trouble
Subject: Sea Turtle extinction is NOT global warming
This a little disturbing to me.
Aha, maybe we have just discovered why the sea turtle is going extinct & it is not global warming. !!!!!!!....
World shame coast in COSTA RICA
Please distribute widely
The Turtle eggs are stolen to be sold.
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