The owner of one of Costa Rica’s tourist information web sites advises travelers to visit Cocos Island, home of pelagic turtles, and Tortuguero National Park, the largest green sea turtle preserve in the world.
Written by costarica-discover-it.com
The horrific environmental disaster along the Gulf coast has introduced millions of people to endangered sea turtles. However, most people know virtually nothing about these amazing animals.
While we see “cute” animals with flippers, we fail to recognize that sea turtles, along with crocodiles, are one of the oldest animals on the planet. Indeed, they’ve been on earth for a hundred million years, and first went to sea when there were only two super continents, not the seven of today.
Imagine mighty Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain in the mighty Himalayas. Sea turtles were swimming the oceans for some 35,000,000 generations before the Himalayas appeared on earth.
These beings are found in every sea except the frozen Antarctic and Arctic. Once, the populations of sea turtles were so great that lost sailors sometimes found land by listening for sea turtles paddling towards nesting grounds.
Sad to say, those numbers are no more. Today, man’s indiscriminate development along every coast and wanton plundering of their nests have put them at risk. For many years, millions were slaughtered in South America to makeexpensive Italian shoes. When “I Love Lucy” began airing, there were still so many nesting turtles in Mexico that a billion eggs a year were being laid. Within four decades, so many turtles were killed that only two turtles came ashore one nesting season. And, that slaughter was taking place across the planet.
But, more and more governments and conservationists are working to turn around the decline turtle populations. Additionally, in many ways at the forefront of this battle for survival is Costa Rica and Costa Rica ecotourism.
Conservation groups and researchers have begun tagging pelagic turtles like the green sea turtle in remote places like Costa Rica’s Cocos Island. Some turtles are fitted with flipper tags while others bear satellite transmitters in an effort to monitor their movements and we now know that some species travel thousands and thousands of miles of oceans, from tropical waters to the deep waters off Newfoundland, Canada.
Cocos Island is one of Costa Rica’s Seven Wonders, an uninhabited island halfway to the Galapagos. It’s also under consideration as one of the World’s Seven Natural Wonders and for a lucky few, a Costa Rica vacation Cocos diving experience of a lifetime . But, it’s way out in the Pacific. Marine researchers, scientists, and conservation volunteers spent some 30 hours boating to the island in their quest for more knowledge about these ancient marine animals.
Consider what they do as a kind of working Costa Rica vacation that perhaps will contribute to preserving these marvelous marine reptiles now sadly endangered in much of their range.
But, truth be told, long before most Americans became distraught at television images of oil covered sea turtles gasping for life, Costa Rica was taking steps to preserve these beings. Long before it was fashionable in Central America, Costa Rica set aside magnificent Tortuguero National Park, just north of where Columbus came ashore and named the country “Rich Coast” (Costa Rica), as the world’s largest green sea turtle preserve. Today, thousands of people include Tortuguero in their Costa Rica vacations, so many in fact, that the once impoverished residents along that part of the Caribbean Coast sometimes refer to these animals as the “turtle that laid the golden egg.”
But, of course, one day, after the oil has stopped gushing in the Gulf, Americans and most of the rest of the world will forget all about the most ancient mariners and go on their way, thinking about what movie to see, what restaurant to eat in, or what present they want for Christmas. Fortunately, there are a few people in tropical places like Costa Rica who will still work to preserve these great animals.
Jacque Yves Cousteau observed that: “If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect.”
We cannot undo the past but the volunteers, scientists and researchers, and volunteers have confidence that It may be that, like the Passenger Pigeon, once so vast that their migrations would shut out the sunlinght and decimated in a few decades, marine turtles are hurtling towards extinction. But, their future is yet to be written. With a little help, perhaps they’ll be here another 100,000,000 years.
And, maybe, just maybe, our Costa Rica vacations to Cocos Island or Tortuguero National Park will contribute a bit, too.
The writer is the owner of the lovely Costa Rica Vacations website. Be sure to discover Olive Ridley Sea Turtle of Costa Rica.
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