Hi all,
Earlier this week WAVES had the privilege to help the internationally established conservation research team of ecOceanica with their semiannual turtle survey. The survey took place an hour and a half North of Lobitos in the little fishing village of El Nuro. In this little village, which enjoy warmer waters than Lobitos, Green and Olive Ridley sea turtles nest and swim around the local pier in crystal clear water. EcOceanica works in close cooperation with the local (fishing) population, who are very protective of their turtles and apparently get angry when fast boats race through their bay. It’s good to see a well integrated project that has successfully captured the interest of the local population, which will make it more sustainable in the long run.
It’s near this local pier where the ecOceanica team casts its net to capture, tag, measure, weight and release these endangered sea turtle species. These are the highlights of our two days up North with ecOceanica:
After arriving late afternoon, during our first night we visited a turtle nest about to hatch. We saw four Olive Ridley turtles hatch and slowly wake up to the rhythm of mother earth. The great thing about ecOceanica is that while they do their survey, they also take the time to educate and involve the local kids from surrounding communities in order to create a spirit of conservation in them. It was great to see the local kids being so involved and stoked about seeing these hatchling joining in the circle of life.
The next morning at 8am we were ready at the local pier, with the help of local fishermen, Junior and Segundo, we casted our baited turtle net near the pier and waited for the turtles to entangle themselves. Once in a while we would patrol the net and inspect the bait and whenever a turtle came close to our boat we would attempt to capture it rodeo-style (a personal favourite). The idea behind the turtle rodeo is the jump of a boat and attempt to grab the turtle by its shell and direct it towards the surface (trust me this sounds a lot easier than it is 🙂 ).
This first day the turtle tally was kind of slow with just three Green turtles entangling themselves in our net. In the afternoon we had a primary school group from Mancora visit us at the pier and showed them the whole process of measuring, weighing and releasing the turtles. Once again it was amazing to see their enthusiasm and smiling faces, full of wonder and amazement for these amazing creatures. Lets hope that sharing these unique experiences with local school children establishes an everlasting conservation spirit in them…
At night we returned to the Olive Ridley nest and we watched how between 40-60 hatchlings departed the nest and headed for the shoreline. The WAVES team privately escorted eight of them all the way to the shoreline and in doing so claiming the inaugural turtle race 🙂 GO TEAM WAVES!!! 😉
On the second day the turtle count was a lot higher with a grand total of eight turtles (four within 30 minutes equals hard work), amongst them the smallest (just 20kgs) and the largest (baptized Goliath weighing in at a whopping 92kgs, it took four people to get her in and out of the boat) on record so far. Goliath was actually capture after a semi-successful rodeo attempt by WAVES which chased her into the net.
One turtle was a recapture from the last research week in June 2011, she had grown several inches and gained six kgs (roughly a kg a month!). Knowing facts such as these will increase the overall understanding of the turtle population around El Nuro.
WAVES looks forward to future cooperation with ecOceanica and wants to thank them for giving us the opportunity to partake in their amazing conservation project.
See the full photo recap on: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150465471330339.416945.560040338&type=1&l=6dcbd4eaa7
