Sea Turtle Conservation & Environmental Education

Our sea turtle assistants narrate for us the good, the bad and the exciting of the sea turtle conservation program.   We believe that the foundation has developed a know-how that we need to share and that is what we are doing with these two projects in Playa Rincon and Río Oro.

PLAYA RINCON

At Rincón, we are joining efforts with the Osa Foundation. This dedicated organization has been protecting the beaches of Rincon and San Josecito for more than 10 years and have stopped the small population of sea turtles in this special place from disappearing forever.   Rincón is a secluded and beautiful beach which has been nesting grounds of 3 types of sea turtles.  Unfortunately, they don’t have the scientific and logistical resources needed to develop it further.  That’s where we come in.  With your help, we can double the patrolling activities on the beach, collect more data and protect these amazing reptiles.

RIO ORO WILDLIFE REFUGE

On the other hand, COTORCO in Playa Rio Oro is working very hard to protect this beach that hosts over 3000 nests per year!   Their community is very small, but very committed to the cause. We have joined forces since 2015 to protect one of the most important nesting beaches in the South Pacific.  But they need more boots on the ground and more financial support. 

Laura and Fernando:

Laura and Fernando are our sea turtle assistants at the sea turtle project at Playa Rincón for this season 2017.  They have gone through a lot while setting up the project at Playa Rincon.  After 2 months of many changes they set up a strong operation at Rincón.   The foundation has been supporting the sea turtle conservation program in Río Oro and intended to work with the sea turtles of Playa Rincón.   So, we decided to work at a project in Río Claro, which would provide us access to Playa Rincón unfortunately that didn’t work out well.   after several efforts to help them get on board with the proper methodology, we gave up!  We moved to Playa Rincón, where the Osa Foundation, not to be confused with the Corcovado Foundation (that is us) has been working for many years protecting seaturtles.  This year for lack of funding and support the program was not going to operate, so our offering of support couldn’t come in a better time.  

 Here are some of Laura’s and Fernando’s remarks about their experience during this season:

The month of September: “One of the dogs that lives nearby was eating sea turtle eggs at the beach. So we became even more alert during the patrols and we make them a little bit longer so we can be at the beach a little bit more, to try to avoid the dog to predate any more eggs. So far, we have been successful with our strategy, let’s see the next months… However, there is good news as well, we have released our first nest of the season with great success, 98% of the eggs hatched!

This month was so great that we even had to expand the hatchery. Talking about eggs, we were very worried about some eggs that we had placed outside of the hatchery before we build it. They were very near to a beach river that was coming very close due to the strong rain. Luckily, they hatch two days before they could fall.

One of those nights, we found a turtle that was so exhausted that was laying the eggs without making a hole. She was in the low tide zone; the water was raising and she was almost drowning.  We took her out of the water and place her in the sand. Fortunately, she just needed to rest a little bit on the sand and after a couple of hours under our watch she went back to the ocean again.

At the end of the month, we had to leave for a couple of days and when we came back to Rincon we found out that some poachers were patrolling the beach to try take some eggs. Therefore, we double the patrol efforts to make sure that they wouldn’t steal more nests.  We will try to maintain our effort until they lose interest in this area.

Finally, we were able to start the English and environmental education lessons in the local school with the children, they were very happy learning the names of their favorite animals”.

Laura, Fernando and Aida are working very hard on the field to protect the sea turtles in Playa Rincon.  Your support makes this project possible, thank you for helping us maintain it alive.