As usual, the second half of the green turtle nesting season means also having a new group of research assistants, coming from a variety of countries including Colombia, El Salvador, Panama, USA and England. Among this group was Eliseo, who also works at the CCC project in Playa Chiriquí (Panama), which is a very important nesting beach for leatherbacks and hawksbills.

During his stay in Tortuguero, Eliseo worked hard and learnt a lot about green turtles, as there are not so many in Chiriquí. This is a valuable experience for Eliseo that we hope he’ll take back with him to Panama. Good luck Eliseo!

In early September we received a group at the station who were participating in a workshop organized by the Inter-American Convention for the Protection and Conservation of Sea Turtles. The topic of the workshop was “Standardizing research methods on turtle nesting beaches”. We were also honoured by the visit of Dr. Archie Carr III and Jeff Phipps (family of some of the founders of CCC), members of the board and David Godfrey (CCC executive director).

Another piece of good news is that we reached our annual goal of a 1000 newly tagged green sea turtles on the 19th of September! To reach our target we had to carry out some extra 7-hour patrols beyond mile 5, our normal patrol limit.

October 2008 Tortuguero Newsletter
October 2008 Tortuguero Newsletter - Espanol

The CCC team has worked 866 hours of night patrol. We have encountered 738 green turtles, of which 428 turtles were tagged for the first time, 207 had been tagged in past years and 103 have renested this year.

The smallest green turtle encountered during this season measured 91cm, and the biggest 120cm in curved carapace length.

This year we have been visited by the oldest nesting turtle in the history of Tortuguero, with a history of 26 years coming to this beach to nest since the year she was first tagged (1982).

We have marked 76 Green turtles nest so far in the season and 5 Hawksbill nests.

The last encounter with a Leatherback was in the 14 of July.

Full August 2008 Tortuguero Newsletter

The CCC is currently patrolling with local kids from Tortuguero.

Thanks to this, the CCC is recruiting the kids who are interested in work with marine turtles.

The kids are learning to tell each of the nesting stages apart, reading tag numbers out, measuring the turtles, checking for any anomalies on the turtles and taking notes of the data in the field books.

The idea behind these patrols is to eventually create projects with marine turtles initiated by the same students of Barra de Tortuguero high school.

Our ideas for the future is to train the next research assistants amongst the local population enabling them to protect the turtles and representing their village.

The CCC´s team is still carrying out educational activities in the different schools in Tortuguero and San Francisco.

At the Colegio Barra de Tortuguero the students were introduced to a few basic principles of ecology, and soil contamination by banana and pineapple plantation byproducts was discussed with the youngsters.

On the other hand, the kids from San Francisco learned about the way in which the food web works, and how important each species is.

On July 26 this year, the new students of the Barra de Tortuguero high school, along with the CCC biological sta-tion´s coordinators at-tended the 7th Marine Turtle Student Sympo-sium in Guacimo, organ-ized by the Environment Project international (EPI).

The new students were very enthusiastic and learnt a lot from each lecture that took place in EARTH´s building (Escuela de Agricultura de le Region Tropical-Humeda).

The coordinator of the CCC field station gave a talk on the work that is carried out in the Tortu-guero project.

Several different sea turtle projects were presented in this symposium, which inspired the students from Tortuguero to perhaps create their own projects in the future.

The Green Turtle Program began the 9th of June.

The first group of Research Assistants came from a di-verse group of countries: Mexico, Spain, Columbia, Aus-tralia, the United States, France, India and Costa Rica.

Several of the Research Assistants arrived with previous experience working with sea turtles in their own countries as well as in Costa Rica. For example, Adhith Swamina-than worked with Ridley turtles in his home country, India, where the most important arribada (mass nesting) occurs with this species in the world.

Two of our Assistants are conducting studies examining the impact of tourist visitations on the sea turtles. We hope the results of these studies provide us with new in-formation and provide even more justification for the Spotter Program.

We hope that this will be a great year for the green sea turtles with the guides, spotters and CCC employees work-ing together to accomplish the same objective: the conser-vation of the green sea turtles.

Turtles encountered to date:
Leatherback = 81
Green = 22
Hawksbill = 3

Greetings from Costa Rica!

If you have read the first ‘Notes from the Field’, you will be aware that the 2008 Leatherback Program is well under way; in fact the nesting season is going by so quickly that the research group has under two weeks left at the station. They have worked extremely hard during the last three months, walking many miles on the beach throughout the day and night, counting tracks and tagging nesting turtles. In the last week the first of the leatherback nests that they marked at the start of the season, and have monitored each day during its incubation period, hatched. Everyone was thrilled to get the opportunity to see a tiny leatherback hatchling when they went to excavate the nest a couple of days after they saw evidence of hatching. It’s always rewarding to be able to see the complete cycle of events on the nesting beach, from the moment the adult female lays her eggs in the sand, to when the tiny tracks leading from the nest signal the departure of a new generation of turtles to the sea. Unfortunately, turtle nests in Tortuguero face a myriad of threats; some are natural, such as crabs or flooding from the sea, but others are artificial, such as illegal poaching or predation from feral dogs.

The CCC continues to work in conjunction with Tortuguero National Park staff to try and provide information about illegal poaching levels, so that they can effectively patrol the beach and enforce the strict laws protecting sea turtles in Costa Rica. We are also dedicated to ensuring that all non-natural threats to the turtles nesting in Tortuguero are reduced; they have plenty of natural enemies to deal with, without the added pressures of the artificial ones. One way in which we are striving to achieve this goal is by helping to reduce the problem of feral dogs on the beach in Tortuguero. Packs of dogs are regularly seen by the research teams out on the beach close to the village during the day, and they have even been spotted during night patrols too. In 2007, 119 sea turtle nests were recorded as predated by dogs during the Green Turtle Program, but this is not a problem that is confined to this turtle species; already in 2008 there have been reports of dogs predating leatherback nests.

The particular problem with dog predation is that they typically disturb the nests when the hatchlings have emerged from their eggs but are still within the egg chamber. Dogs will dig down and find the hatchlings, and either kill them or eat the eggs. Even those hatchlings that do not die are often injured, or they fall victim to other predators, such as crabs or ants.

In recent years there has been a noticeable, and disturbing, increase in the number of dogs in the village of Tortuguero; many of whom do not have an owner, and so who are left to fend for themselves. Obviously turtle eggs and hatchlings are an easy meal for a dog; and once they learn how to get at them, then they will readily destroy other nests when they are hungry in the future.

Towards the end of the 2007 green turtle nesting season some of the local tour guides in Tortuguero started to express their concern over the negative effects that the dogs were having out on the nesting beach; the subject was raised in a letter that they presented to the Ministry of Environment and Energy staff responsible for protection in Tortuguero National Park, requesting their assistance to reduce the problem of dog predation of nests. In response to this issue the National Park, together with CCC, another non-governmental organization, ProParques, and concerned members of the community formed a committee to organize a veterinary clinic for the area. Over the next few months staff this committee approached several different animal welfare organizations, the National University veterinary school, and a private vet from the Caribbean region, for their support in finding a solution to this problem; with their help it was decided to conduct a spay/neuter clinic in the area, to tackle the growing population of stray dogs in the community. Their experiences suggested that in addition to the clinic it would be of great benefit to also run a simultaneous educational campaign, to raise local awareness about caring for their pets. Medical pharmaceutical companies were also approached for sponsorship of the project through the donation of veterinary supplies necessary for the operations and after-care medication of the animals.

In the weeks leading up to the first of the spay/neuter clinics in 2008, staff from Tortuguero National Park, ProParques and the Costa Rican Humane Association for the Protection of Animals (AHPPA in Spanish), visited the schools and high schools in the communities of Tortuguero and San Francisco; giving talks about how to care for their dogs and cats, and telling them the health and social benefits of having their animals spayed/neutered. The focus of the clinic was on the damage that the over-population of dogs was causing to the local wildlife, primarily the turtles. They also conducted interviews to find out an estimate of the number of pets in the village, and the opinion of the community towards veterinary care. The results of these interviews were quite worrying, for they revealed that there are almost 200 pets (dogs and cats) in Tortuguero, and that hardly any had visited a veterinarian.

Armed with that information, and prepared for a busy schedule, on the weekend of the 28 – 30 March, 2008, the first veterinary clinic was realized; veterinarians from AHPPA, the National University Veterinary School and Dr Hernán Barrantes (from the local area) arrived in Tortuguero and began the first of many operations that would take place over the next couple of days. That afternoon several dogs were spayed/neutered at the temporary clinic that was set up at a central location in the middle of the village. News of the vets arrived quickly spread, and they were soon surrounded by a group of local school children very keen to see what was happening, having recently learned about the vet clinic in the presentations given in school the week before.

The following morning the vets started early to try and beat the heat, and worked tirelessly (in both villages) throughout the day. There was soon a long line of dogs, and cats, waiting patiently in the shade for the next available vet. While most were brought in by their owners, the local children were also able to bring along some of the stray dogs too. Each animal was spayed/neutered and treated for external and internal parasites; they were also given antibiotics to prevent post-operation infection. Each owner was also given a list of detailed aftercare instructions when their animal was ready to go home. The lack of cars in the village meant that there were some ingenious methods of transporting the still sleepy animals back to their house; some were carried, some went on the back of an ATV and many were ferried home in style in a fleet of wheelbarrows lined with cardboard! CCC staff and volunteers were pressed into action to assist with the transportation of animals, and to help coordinate the arrival and processing of the animals for the vets.

At the end of the weekend all those involved agreed that it had been a huge success; 93 dogs and cats had been spayed/neutered and deparisatized between the two villages (almost half of those that were recorded during the surveys). Everyone was very impressed with the level of support shown by the communities, and as the vets were leaving people were already starting to ask when they would be returning. While this will not be an instant fix to the problem of predation of turtle nests, the idea is to repeat the clinics at least twice a year, so that the dog population cannot spiral out of control. In addition, the education component of the programme will improve the general health of the pets in the village, and raise awareness of the huge responsibility that owning a pet entails.

The next clinic has been planned for the end of June, and in the next couple of weeks CCC volunteers will assist in the publicity of this event, to try and continue with the success of the first. One of the programme sponsors, the pharmaceutical company FaryVet, has already offered to donate vaccinations for this next clinic, and several generous private donations have also been received. Hopefully with this financial assistance and the support of the community for the programme it can continue into the foreseeable future. And such a project brings only benefits; there will be a reduction in the number of dogs (and cats) in the village, and they will be vaccinated and well cared for, and so less likely to be out on the beach depredating endangered turtle nests. CCC will continue to be involved in this programme, and will also actively monitor the levels of nest predation in an effort to validate its success.

Hasta luego!

Emma Harrison
CCC Scientific Director
Costa Rica