Costa Rica Ecotourism: One Hundred Million Generations Of Olive Ridley Sea Turtles
October 3rd, 2009 by Victor C. Krumm, under Vacations. No Comments
A very long time ago, the first olive ridley marine turtles arrived in the oceans of the world. Today, they are seriously threatened, a fact that is really difficult to believe because, after all, they have been with us—before there was an us— more than 100,000,000 years.
Want some perspective about just how long a hundred million years are? Think about Tyrannosaurus Rex, the mightiest dinosaur the planet has ever seen. This “Terrible Lizard” lived in the North America continent sixty-five million years ago, and it feasted on these ancient turtles when they came ashore to nest.
These ancient reptiles of the 7 seas have flourished for impossible to imagine eons, despite being eaten by just about everything under the sun for millions of generations. Indeed, probably thirty million generations of marine turtles were preyed upon by reptiles and other dinosaurs and creatures in the oceans before the first Tyrannosaurus Rex walked the earth and, since then, another 70,000,000 generations have suffered the same fate. Still, they flourished.
The greatest extinction the earth has suffered was a calamity that killed all of the mighty dinosaurs that fed on the turtles and roamed all the continents. But, the sea turtles not only survived, they flourished.
They spread, over millennia, across the face of the world, until these ancient mariners populated every temperate and tropical ocean. They were common from the Sea of Arabia to the Atlantic coast of the Americas and from the Pacific coast of the New World to India. Tens upon tens of millions, and maybe even more, of olive ridleys.
When I was a child everybody loved watching “I Love Lucy.” When the first episode of that popular comedy aired, the oceans were still filled with olive ridley turtles. On Mexico’s Pacific coast alone, there were 10,000,000 olive ridley nests that year—1951— and every nest contained about 100 eggs per clutch. That is a billion eggs on a single coast in just one small country. A billion eggs every year. And, of course, these marine turtles were found virtually everywhere there were warm or temperate waters. The bounty was limitless.
There were so many eggs that were easy pickings and so much easy money to be made that, during the incredible arribadas, or nestings, massive pack trains of horses and mules were brought to the beaches. These pack animals carried out hundreds of millions of eggs each nesting season, year-after-year. And, so it was that within about 20 years or so, there was only one nest in one year on a beach where there had been several hundred thousand when we first laughed at Lucy and Desi. Unfortunately, this was being repeated around the world.
At the same time, many countries opened commercial marine turtle fisheries.
The result? From limitless to endangered in a few short years. A single generation of men nearly accomplished what seemed impossible: nearly destroying in the blink of an eye what had taken 100,000,000 generations to create.
However, as more and more countries finally realized the extent of depredation, some have begun taking steps to conserve and protect sea turtles. Tiny Costa Rica has created important wildlife reserves and worked with dedicated conservationists and the local people of Costa Rica to rebuild stocks.
Costa Rica’s Ostional Beach on its Pacific coast is said to have the world’s largest mass nestings, called arridabas of olive ridley sea turtles. Each month, typically when the moon is in its last quarter, female turtles gather offshore for days and sometimes weeks, then suddenly come to the beach en mass. Though arribadas occur all year, if you want to experience Costa Rica eco tourism at its finest, visit during the rainy season from October, November, and December. Sometimes, hundreds of thousands of olive ridley’s come ashore over a few days. The biggest arribada in recent years was 500,000 coming ashore to nest in 1995—on a beach just a few hundred meters long.
Today, Costa Rica understands that these creatures are worth more alive than dead. And, remember that Mexican beach that was reduced to a single nest? Well, the government finally protected it and it recovered to 50,000 nests in 1988—and more than a million in 2000.
With a little help from Nature and mankind, the olive ridley will have another 100,000,000 years.
