Costa Rica Ecotourism: One Hundred Million Generations Of Olive Ridley Sea Turtles
A very long time ago, the first olive ridley marine turtles arrived in the oceans of the world. Today, these ancients are endangered, a fact that is really difficult to believe because, after all, they have been on this planet more than one hundred million years.
How long is 100,000,000 years? Here is a way to put some perspective on it. Remember the mighty T Rex? It lived in North America about sixty-five million years ago and, as day follows night, it ate ancient turtles when they came ashore to lay their eggs.
These ancient beings have flourished for uncountable eons, despite being eaten by just about everything under the sun for tens of millions of generations. Indeed, probably 30,000,000 or more generations of marine turtles were preyed upon by reptiles and other dinosaurs and fish before the first Tyrannosaurus Rex walked the earth and, since then, another seventy million generations have suffered the same fate. Still, they flourished.
They even survived the greatest extinction the world has ever known. Indeed though all of the mighty dinosaurs perished—they lived and flourished.
Over millennia, spreading across the face of the globe, these oldest of all reptiles swam every temperate and tropical ocean. From the Arabian Sea to the east Atlantic coast of the Americas and from India to the Pacific coast of the New World, they thrived all around the world. Untold millions.
In 1951, the same year that Americans began to watch “I Love Lucy,” the oceans were filled with olive ridley turtles. Mexico’s Pacific coast alone hosted 10,000,000 olive ridley nests when the first episode of that popular comedy aired and every nest had about 100 eggs per clutch. That is about a billion eggs. A billion eggs laid along just one coast of Mexico in just one year. And, remember, these sea turtles were found virtually everywhere in warm or temperate waters. The numbers were 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 and our mechanized trains and trucks 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 across the world.
Even while the turtles’ nests were being systematically pillaged for eggs, several countries, set up commercial olive ridley fisheries. The female turtles proved to be easily caught because they gathered in huge numbers close to shore before coming to the age old beaches to nest in their large arribadas.
In only a couple of decades a single generation of humans nearly accomplished what had seemed impossible. From limitless to endangered while most of us watched television.
However, what one generation of people nearly decimated another generation has begun to restore. Belatedly realizing the extent of depredation, some countries have begun taking steps to conserve and protect sea turtles. Costa Rica has set aside important reserves and worked with dedicated conservationists and local residents to rebuild stocks.
Today, Ostional Beach, on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, may have the world’s largest arribadas of olive ridley sea turtles. Every month, often when the moon is in its last quarter, female turtles gather just offshore and suddenly come to the beach in large groups, over the course of several days and nights. The greatest arribadas are often in October, November, and December and the biggest arribada in recent years was half a million females coming ashore in 1995. If you want to experience extraordinary Costa Rica ecotourism, this is a must-see.
Costa Rica has come to recognize that these special animals are worth more than the value of their meat and eggs. And Mexico? Remember that pathetic single nest on a beach once filled with turtles? Well, the government finally decided to protect it. Slowly, it recovered to 50,000 nests in 1988—and then up to several hundred thousand nests in 2000.
May God and mankind grant the olive ridley another 100,000,000 years.
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