Sea Turtles from Costa Rica

Introduction
Costa Rica is a country that places a lot of emphasis on the conservation of wild animals. Apart from sloths, it’s also a home for thousands of sea turtles. Over winter break, I had the opportunity personally to travel to Costa Rica in search of these beautiful yet precious species. I was lucky enough to experience the cool ocean breeze, the welcoming laughs of the local school, and the beauty of the Corozalito sea turtles. With this tough yet fulfilling experience, I was able to gain a better insight into the local beauty that nature has to offer. The care I provided for the local turtles is what I hope to be able to build the future foundation that the local school has to offer in the conservation and preservation of sea turtles.

In this article, there will firstly be a piece about the current living situation of sea turtles including how human beings have made them suffer. Then, we will look at what the government and local people in Costa Rica have done to help save these sea turtles. Finally, there will be a review on the effectiveness of the measures taken by people in Costa Rica for the conservation of sea turtles as well as actions taken by other countries on this topic.

Current situation of sea turtles
In the past 100 years, humans had a great demand for turtle meat, eggs and its beautiful and attractive shells. Therefore, the hunting of sea turtles was very popular at that time. This has greatly reduced the number of sea turtles. In the world nowadays, there are only 7 types of sea turtles left. Among these types, the smallest of them is called the Olive Ridley. Olive Ridley sea turtles are very endangered animals. In Costa Rica, there’s a place called the Ostional Beach, a famous place for tourists to see the breeding of Olive Ridley sea turtles. The breeding season of sea turtles is a marvelous sight because a large amount of sea turtles would come up from the sea to the beach to produce their eggs, attracting many travel companies to open up tours to bring tourists to see such scenes. During breeding season, female Olive Ridley sea turtles would arrive at the beach collectively and give birth to eggs. In each season, they can produce about 300 to 700 eggs. When tourists tried to enter such protected zone on the Ostional Beach to see such scenes, they would be a threat to about 5,000 sea turtles that plan to enter the beach near zone for breeding purpose, making the sea turtles afraid to reach the beach and some of them even to give up breeding by returning back to the sea. Apart from arriving at the beach, some tourists would also sit on the back of the sea turtles for pictures. A more blameworthy act by tourists includes digging out the sea turtles’ eggs and bringing them home. Some people on the beach even do so for the purpose of sale. The Ostional Beach, originally a beautiful paradise suitable for sea turtles to reproduce their next generation, is being destroyed by tourists. In this world, each species has its own use so that the food chain can be balanced, and the ecological aspect can be maintained. For sea turtles, their use in the cycle is that they can help to control sea grass so that they can grow healthily and be able to continue to grow and form grass beds for breeding and living of many other species like fish and shellfish. We can see that these chains are all linked together. Humans are also a part of the chain, but as a member of the chain, some of us keep damaging another species’ life or habitat.

Costa Rica’s efforts
In Costa Rica, there’s a protected zone of the Ostional Beach which was established by local people living near the beach who took part voluntarily in a program on the conservation of sea turtles. Participants of that program would work together on the beach to protect the breeding season of Olive Ridley sea turtles from June to December each year. They also help sea turtles by patrolling the beach to ensure no trash are left and ensure tourists to behave well so that sea turtles can produce their eggs safely on the beach.

Efforts by the local people are not enough. Therefore, the government of Costa Rica has worked together with local police, local people, and travel companies to ensure the acts of tourists do not destroy the species. For example, when tours arrive at the beach, the tour guide would warn people of the things that are prohibited to be done, such as not being noisy and not using lights against . Moreover, part of the tour fees would be used on local construction and reimbursements for local conservation organizations’ expenses.

Apart from local people’s work, the egg harvest activity in Costa Rica is also regulated by a program ran by the University of Costa Rica, a community organization called ADIO Ministry of Natural Resources in Costa Rica. They would conduct reviews for the program and submit the report to the government every 5 years to ensure that they are working on the right track. Throughout the past 20 years, the protected zone has already preserved a great number of eggs. Under the regulation, local people are allowed to collect eggs, but only limited eggs produced by sea turtles 3 days before the breeding season because of the high possibility for those eggs being destroyed by ocean waves. Another restriction is that people are only authorized to pick during a specified period and they can only pick up 1% of the total number of eggs that exist on the beach. Now, readers may ask why the government would allow such egg harvest. The answer is that during each season, too many sea turtles would arrive at the Ostional Beach for breeding, causing a lack of space on the beach for all the sea turtles to produce their eggs. Subsequent sea turtles arriving at the beach would destroy the eggs that already exist. Therefore, to make better use of the eggs, the government allows limited picking of eggs, and the income gained after people have sold the eggs would be re-invested in local development and protection of sea turtles.

Effectiveness
Engaging local people in the conservation of sea turtles is undoubtedly a good practice. Apart from having manpower to ensure the breeding of sea turtles, this can also raise people’s awareness and let them know they can actually help a lot in such protection activities. Regarding the regulation of egg harvest, it’s a kind of legal exemption to an internationally banned act i.e. collection of sea turtle eggs. The intention of such exemption is good. Apart from ensuring stable sea turtle population, the eggs can also be foods for local families, trying to make the best use of these eggs. This project has greatly increased the population of Olive Ridley sea turtles there. However, such regulation is not perfect. To raise its effectiveness, we also need more competent control and monitor of the number of sea turtle eggs collected and strictly ensure that eggs collected will go into the local economy, instead of being sold to people overseas. Furthermore, we also need an effective system to detect and prohibit any selling of such eggs in the black market. According to statistics, the selling of sea turtle eggs can be profitable for people since the demand for turtle eggs is reported to range between $100-$300 USD per egg.

We can see that local governments have put in ass much effort as they can to protect these amazing animals. Cooperation is the most important thing emphasized by many countries in the aspect of animal conservation. Similarly, in the topic of sea turtles, other countries around the world have made their contributions. Let’s take the United States as an example. In the United States, there’s a non-profit organization called SEE Turtles based in Beaverton, a city in Washington County. It works together with other similar institutions worldwide to protect sea turtles in Latin America. Through donations and other indirect spending, it has earned more than $1 million for conservation works for sea turtles since its launch in 2008. Under the programs of the organization, there’s also a regular patrolling activity like local people in Ostional Beach, where more than 500 volunteers would patrol nesting beaches and guiding people’s activities on the beaches. Up till now, the organization has saved more than 1.7 million eggs at different nesting beaches in Mexico, Costa Rica and Cuba. Through education and training of teachers, the class presentations conducted by SEE Turtles has reached over 10,000 students in US and Canada and countless school visits to the organization has been conducted.

Nowadays, we all understand the importance of safeguarding our country’s boundary, our homeland, and our personal rights, there’s no reason to believe that we shouldn’t safeguard different animals living together with us on the same planet. When we now see so many organizations and people protecting the animals, whether endangered or not, what’s the reason making us not to take a step further and join them? The protections to sea turtles and pandas offered by different countries may sound different due to the circumstances that one of them live in the ocean and the other live in bamboo forests. However, the mission on conservation of these animals are the same. Animals, as one of the living species on this planet, should own the same status as human beings and should offer help to each other. All the works done by Costa Rica and other countries towards the protection of sea turtles should be taken as an encouragement and inspiration for China in its panda-protection works.