Secluded Vacation

A Costa Rica scientific fin and satellite tagging expedition recently got underway at Cocos Island mapping its green sea turtle and hawksbill visitors.

Conservationists and researchers travel Costa Rica open waters for at least 30 hours in their quest of migration habits about these ancient marine animals.

They are engaged in a kind of working Costa Rica vacation that they hope will contribute to saving these marvelous reptilian mariners now endangered in much of their range.

Cocos Island was described by the famous oceanographer, Jacque Cousteau, as the most beautiful island he had ever encountered. The small island, only about nine square miles in size, lies some 340 miles off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, almost halfway to the Galapagos Islands.

It was not the lovely sunsets and beaches that captivated Captain Cousteau. Its beauty is just off its shores, under water, in a place that Costa Ricans have chosen as one of the Seven Wonders of Costa Rica. In those waters one finds incomparable treasure: huge schools of fish, porpoises, whales and turtles.

Marine turtles have swum the oceans of the world since the days of dinosaurs. Imagine the mighty Tyrannosaurus preying on them 200 million years ago when they landed ashore to lay their eggs on the beaches.

These beings roam all the seas of the world except the frozen Antarctic and Arctic.

Once, the raw numbers of sea turtles were so massive that mariners who were lost in the fog, sometimes found land by listening for sea turtles paddling towards nesting grounds.

Once, not so long ago the raw numbers of sea turtles were still so seemingly without end that mariners lost in the fog sometimes found their way by listening for sea turtles paddling towards ancient nesting grounds. For eons, sea turtles provided food for every sort of creature. Over eons, billions and billions were eaten by and trillions and trillions of eggs fed birds and animals, including man, for countless, yet the species’ flourished. However, in just a few short, recent generations, man’s unrestrained development along every coast and wanton plundering of these animals and their eggs have put them at risk. Whole populations were killed off in South America to make stylish but expensive shoes for Europeans.

Captain Cousteau predicted that: “If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect.”

However, international conservation organizations are working to turn around the decline turtle populations. International treaties relating to sea turtles are now in place, though many countries have yet to implement them. Conservation groups, researchers, and scientists have begun tagging ocean roaming turtles in far away places like Cocos Island, the Galapagos, Columbia, and other areas. Some marine turtles are fitted with satellite transmitters that track them 24 hours a day while others bear numbered flipper tags. It is all part of an effort to monitor their travel patterns.

These taggingscientists, researchers and volunteers have faith that marine turtles can be around another 200 million years but only if men pay more attention to protecting them than exploiting them.

The author , Victor Krumm, lives in tropical Costa Rica. Follow his lovely site Costa Rica Vacations and for info about great beaches check out Costa Rica Beaches