Helping the Babies

So I should probably get the point of my trip. The turtles. There was a hatchery just a few steps from our house that we were in charge of monitoring 24 hours per day. When the nests got too hot during the day, we would water them. The reason behind that was never explained to me, since in the wild, the nests were not watered.

During busy season there are so many nests, that the volunteers dig them out and rebury them in this hatchery. Each is surrounded by chicken wire that goes a few inches down into the sand, then covered by these blue or grey tops. This keeps crabs, birds, raccoons and other predators out of the nests. Turtle eggs are not only a delicacy for animals, but also the Ticos. We had to protect the eggs from poachers as well.

Everyone had at least one other person on turtle duty with them, and every couple or trio had four hours per day that they were responsible for the babies. The shifts were divided so that everyone had two hours during the day and two hours during the night. So if you had from 12-2 in the afternoon, you also had midnight to 2AM to check the hatchery. Most of the babies hatched at night.

When the babies did hatch, we would put wet sand into a bucket, pat it down and put the hatchlings inside the bucket. Then we would take the babies back to the same section on the beach that their mama laid their eggs so that the experience would be as natural as possible. (Also, the females come back to the beach they were hatched to lay their own eggs.) The babies were places 100 meters from where the water met the sand. Then, they would slowly make their way to the water. During the night, we couldn't use flashlights to watch this process because the way the turtles know to go into the water is by following the light of the moon reflected off the water. So, our flashlights had a red light filter on them, so it would distract them.

The two times I got to release the babies took about 45 minutes for them to make their way from the sand into the water.