Releasing Olive Ridley turtles

Volunteers releasing 2,000 Olive Ridley turtles at Playa las Tortugas. Photos by David Lansing.

The Fletcher’s house in Custodio, Casa Corona del Mar, is situated on a rocky cliff about 30 feet above the ocean. To the north is Punta Gorda jutting out like a crocodile head from the coastline and beyond that San Blas. To the south is an estuary that is a sanctuary for all kinds of seabirds. If you cross the estuary during low tide, when you will still get wet up to your navel, you reach a beautiful long white sandy beach, called Playa las Tortugas, where Olive Ridley turtles come and lay their eggs in the sand. Usually the turtles lay their eggs in the fall during the arribada, which is sort of like a turtle version of the invasion of Normandy. Who knows how this is coordinated or who is the turtle general that decrees that now is the time to assault the beach, but this is what they do.

Of course, even assaulting the beach in mass, the odds are against the survival of their offspring. Each female will dig a hole in the sand with her rear flipper and deposit 100-110 eggs that then must incubate undisturbed for 55 days before they hatch. Even if they survive hanging out on the beach for two months, the odds are not good that they will survive in the wild. First they have to crawl across the beach as seagulls and other birds pick them off one by one and then even if they make it to the surf, they have to contend with all the fish in the sea just waiting for an easy meal. In fact, it’s estimated that only 1 in 1,000 hatchlings will survive. Not great odds.

So although the arribada is over for the season, there are always a few old girls who didn’t get the memo and continue to find their way to Playa las Tortugas to lay their eggs in November or even December  which means they are hatching just about now.

Yesterday afternoon a small group of us went down to the turtle sanctuary and discovered that they had maybe 2,000 baby Olive Ridleys that they would be releasing about an hour before sunset and we were invited to help with the release. One of the student volunteers came down with a plastic tub with the two thousand squirming turtle hatchlings and told us the rules. He drew a long line in the sand and told us we were all to stay behind that line. We would be given a handful of hatchlings and we were to place them on the sand facing the ocean and let them go. Do not help them, he said. It is very important they crawl over the sand and find their own way into the water. It is how they remember where to come back in 10 or 15 years when it is time to lay their eggs. And then he walked down the line of volunteers with his plastic tub and gave everyone large handfuls of turtles and at his signal, we all gently put them down on the sand. Watching, like nervous parents, as they took tiny steps towards the pounding surf. Knowing full well that from these 2,000 or so hatchlings only one or two would ever return. If that.

I guess I’m the grinch in this bunch. I look at all these tiny little turtles struggling to even get to the water and it seems almost impossible to me that even one will survive. Chris and Malin, on the other hand, wander up and down the beach, finding the little hatchlings that have already been carried by the strong current several hundred yards from where they were released and thrown back up on the sand by the powerful surf. They carefully pick up the dark bodies, weighing less than an ounce, and, very much breaking the rules, take them back to the ocean. They do this over and over again, even as the sun has long ago set and it is almost impossible to see. For them, there is always a possibility of life.