The Truth About Saving Turtles

In this week’s post I wanted to share with you my most recent volunteering experience in Costa Rica with LAST (Latin American Sea Turtles). Social media, particularly TikTok has romanticised a lot of things, one of which was working with turtles. Although TikTok only shows the highlights of volunteering it also has brought in tourism for many turtle conservation which raises awareness and bring money for the foundation to continue their research and expand. Therefore, in this post I want to still encourage to volunteer but I also want to show the behind the scenes of working with sea turtles and the risks that come with trying to save an endangered species. 

I was interested in working with turtles from seeing so many videos on social media, however, during volunteering I was taught much more about the cause and since have spent time devoted to researching into 'saving the turtles'. Turtles have been key to the oceans ecosystem for the last 10 million years, however, they are slow to reproduce, only 1 out of 1000 turtles will survive adulthood and reproduce. On top of this turtles are being hunted for their eggs, skin, meat, shell, therefore making them endangered as they cannot reproduce to the same extent of them being poached. For some costal communities turtle's meat is a good source of protein and their blood is seen as a natural remedy and turtle eggs are eaten as an aphrodisiac and sign of wealth. 

Our journey began in San Jose the week prior to the volunteering starting. We spent a couple days in San Jose and then travelled down to the Caribbean side of Costa Rica to a town called Puerto Viejo. After a couple days we took two public buses and a boat to get to the remote location of the LAST hatchery. There was only five volunteers and three senior volunteers so we am became very close very quickly which helped with the community spirit. 

When I first arrived it was a bit of a shock; there was no electricity, no internet and very little water. It was not easy from going from an air conditioned hotel room, and for a whole week- it was going to be a struggle. We arrived late in the afternoon and had a couple hours before we were going to be on shift so we had sometime to eat and sleep before the big night ahead of us. Due to the lack of facilities the food was very limited and consisted of rice and beans which made our diet very simple and often disappointing. 

Every evening we went to bed after dinner at 7pm and woke up at 12am and then had to patrol the beach for turtles nesting for the next 4/5 hours. The reason for the patrolling was to make sure that the turtles were not at risk of their eggs being poached or being killed by poachers who would sell them for financial gain. 

LAST was located in Tortuguero, the Provence of Limon, the Caribbean region of Costa Rica. Tortuguero is well known by tourists and locals for its turtle sightings and therefore means that this is one of the most popular places to poach nests. However, since Costa Rica has taken action to ban the poaching of turtles and their eggs the poaching has not stopped but rather just become more risky for both the poachers and the volunteers as now it has moved into gang territory and has become key location for drugs to come in and out of the country. Although there are two teams on the beach between the poachers and the volunteers, there was a unspoken rule between the locals and the volunteers that whoever found the turtle first got to keep the eggs and they shouldn't go near the turtle. This was particularly hard when you would find a turtle laying straight into a poachers arms knowing that those eggs were going to be eaten the next day, however, it was the only way to make sure you and the team stayed safe. 

During our patrols if we did found a turtle nesting that hadn't been found first by a poacher we knew we would be able to save those eggs. Before our first patrol we were taught what to do and how to collect the data. There was always two people patrolling together so one would be collecting the eggs in two the bag and the other would be writing all the turtles information down to know which type of turtle. We would then bring back the eggs to the hatchery, mind you each egg can weigh up to 90g so the bag is really heavy which slows down the walk a lot. Once you reached the hatchery we would then hand the eggs over to another volunteer who would build its nest and carefully place all the eggs back.  

The next morning we were all called in for a 10am meeting to discuss what we saw on our patrols that night and if we rescued any turtles and then we had the rest of the day to relax before our next shift. Everyone would have a two hour shift in the hatchery to making sure there were no animals or poachers who were trying to get the eggs. After that shift we would often nap or play card games. I spent a lot of the time writing in my journal and read. We also had to attend other activities, such as Spanish class, yoga and beach clean ups. 

I believe that it’s vital to volunteer during your gap year as it’s important to give back to the community, as well as helps you build on your experiences and global knowledge. Over the course of the year I have volunteered in three countries, for three different causes, all in which I believe are important to support. 

These three charities I would highly recommend volunteering for if given the opportunity are, all are linked below; 

LAST- Latin American Sea Turtles

VBC- Volunteer Building Cambodia

BEES- Burt and Emily's Elephant Sanctuary 

Love Aria 

XO