In last week’s blog post I forgot to mention a significant part of the week – we had our first poached turtle. We commonly get poached nests, but on occasion the beach gets poached turtles. Sometimes, they will flip the turtle on its back and leave it there to be picked up later, sometimes they kill the turtle on the beach and leave behind blood trails and sometimes they drag the turtle on its back to a nearby boat. Emma and I had just begun our track survey in the morning when we came across an up track, but no down track. Our first thought was the turtle must still be nesting, though once we arrived at the end of the track we knew this wasn’t the case. Using prints in the sand we put together the story of what happened the night before. The turtle came out of the water to nest and once she stopped to rest, two poachers came up and flipped her over. They began to drag her on her back to the trail in the vegetation. While there, 3 or 4 more poachers arrived to help carry the turtle a few meters to their boat. Photo below.
The horizontal line at the top of the photo is where she came out of the water. On the right, she was flipped on her shell, and the line coming in to the foreground is where she was dragged on the poachers’ way to the vegetation.
Interestingly, only female turtles are eaten. The meat of males has a different and unpleasant flavor. Even when they capture the turtles in the water, they only catch females. So far, this is the only turtle that has been taken from our 5 miles of beach. A lot more have been taken from the water inside the marine park, but the park doesn’t have the man power or the funding to patrol the water to keep the poachers at bay.
A few nights ago, I had a patrol from 12-4 a.m. (after another patrol was out from 8-12), and we came across a small blue light. At first I thought someone passed out on the beach, but as I got closer I noticed it was a small blue light you attach to your finger. Jenn and I have them to play with our cats. When I looked up, I noticed a turtle right in front of me. The light was located directly behind the turtle, and the turtle had just begun to nest. The light was placed on her track between the time the other patrol walked by and when we arrived. There should not have been anyone on the beach at that time and the light was coincidentally right behind a turtle. I ended up keeping the light and explaining the situation to our scientific director. We don’t know what the purpose of the light was, but I theorize it was placed there to signal the turtle was there for someone to come by and pick it up. There is no way to know if we saved a turtle that night or if someone just dropped a light when they passed by earlier.
On a much happier note with turtle experiences, we had the rare opportunity to witness a day-nesting turtle. George and an eco-volunteer left the station a few minutes earlier than me and our program coordinator. When we were about to leave the station, we received a call saying there was a turtle in front of the nearby! An exciting thing to witness as she finished laying her eggs and returned to sea. It’s probably the only opportunity I’ll have to take photos of an adult turtle while here.
Me awkwardly squatting next to the turtle.
The turtle beginning her trek to sea.
The turtle returning to sea.
We are finally seeing more snakes. We had the plague of baby boa constrictors a few weeks ago, and one day this week I saw two different species of snake. A Bronze-striped Parrot Snake (juvenile) and an Eyelash Pit Viper (juvenile). Both were seen on track surveys. Of course I took about 50 pictures of each, but I’m only posting two here.
A Bronze-striped Parrot Snake.
An Eyelash pit viper. The green and pink colors are incredible.
While I’m on the subject of animals and before I delve in to community projects, I have a small update on the lonely toucan from a previous post. Lately we’ve been hearing a toucan calling incessantly. A day before we noticed, Nerine spotted a dead toucan on the beach. We think these two were a mated pair, and the remaining toucan was calling for the other. We returned to the beach a few days later and found the skull, and decided to keep it. A little morbid, yes, but still pretty cool. Below is a picture. Sorry it’s sideways, I can’t figure out how to rotate a photo on this Spanish computer. The keys are wonky.
Chestnut-mandibled Toucan skull. The colorful bill is serrated. I didn’t know they ate other birds!
Ok – on to involvement in the community. Another RA, Emma, who is pretty much fluent in Spanish is in charge of coordinating English lessons in the high school. The first class, I assisted, which was no easy task. There were about 10-15 students in the class at vastly different levels of English. The teacher did not let us know her lesson plans or what level of speaking they were at, so we went in blind and tried to prepare for everything. We had a great lesson plan, but we struggled to keep their attention – there is no structure in Tortuguero schools. Teachers can cancel class when they wish, the kids hop from classroom to classroom smoking, making out with their significant others, listening to music and just plain ignoring the teachers. I was completely out of my comfort zone because I could not speak to them in Spanish, and some didn’t know any English. I’ll just say it was not the most pleasant experience of my life. Earlier today, Emma returned for a second class – only this time with 32 students that acted no differently. I’m glad I wasn’t there.
The high school consisted of multiple buildings. Each was a classroom that taught the basic subjects.
The class I helped teach English. There are only a few students in the photo because they kept leaving.
Tortuguero Traveler 