Visa Run - Nicaragua

The opportunity of working in another country is certainly a special privilege. One that I am truly grateful to be having for a second time. For those of you who do not know, this is not my first extended stay abroad. I spent two years living in Mozambique as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. During that time, I learned how to speak Portuguese and travelled around the country as a proselytizing missionary. Aside from my flights in and out Mozambique, the extent of my traveling there was limited to in-country transfers. I had yet to cross international borders on land. That chance came in December as I travelled to Nicaragua with Cory Snyder, one of our other field team biologists. Having arrived together on October 1^st, we were fast approaching our 90-day visa limit and needed to leave the country for 3 days. After that time, we could re-enter Costa Rica on a fresh 90-day travel visa. This would provide enough time for us to finish off the season here at Playa Grande and return home in early March.


During our three days in Granada we were able to accomplish some neat activities. We walked the historic streets one morning and tried entering the old fort, only to discover that the inside is a private residence and the outside is for tourists. We wandered past various churches and passed through the open market. One afternoon we embarked on an Isleta Tour. This guided boat tour took us around the cluster of islands in Lake Nicaragua, where we saw an old fort, fishermen, island houses for both the rich and poor, as well as fantastic wildlife. We stopped by monkey island, where a local veterinarian has relocated several white-faced monkeys after treating them for injuries. They have grown fat off of the bananas that visitors feed them, myself included. What impressed me most of all was the population of nesting oropendolas near the end of the trip. I have been reading about these birds over the last year and was very excited to see them in the wild. Our final adventure was a trip to the Masaya Volcano. Cory really wanted to see lava and I didn’t mind going there again. (If you recall from my previous posts, I have been to this part of Nicaragua before and that was one of our activities.) Once again, it was a stunning experience to peer into the heart of the Earth.

Before heading back to Costa Rica, I met up with Juan, my proud Nicaragüense friend. He was one of our drivers during my first visit to Nicaragua and is a resident of Granada. I was glad to see him again. He is a hardworking and jovial man who loves showing off his homeland. Nicaragua is an incredible place with many natural wonders, but we needed to return to our very important turtle work in Playa Grande. 

Night Patrol - Costa Rica

Out of the many tasks and responsibilities we have as field biologists in Playa Grande, the most important job is night patrol. Without night patrol, we would be hard-pressed to actually see a turtle laying her eggs. Although it is possible to find a turtle on the beach during daylight hours, the most opportune time is at night. Sea turtles typically arrive on the beach near the nights high tide. As the tide cycles change with each passing day, so too does our patrol times. Some nights we are on the early shift from 7 pm to midnight, but as the tide comes in later and later we have swing shifts. These shifts start an hour later and last an hour longer until we start late shifts from 11 pm to 5 am. The purpose of this scheduling is to provide the best beach coverage for 3 hours before and after high tide.

Always patrolling in teams of 2 or 3 people, depending on the number of biologists and volunteers we have available, we walk sections of the beach in search of turtles. The 3 sections of beach that we walk include North and South of Playa Grande and Playa Ventanas. We do not always have the staff to patrol Playa Ventanas, however most nests laid there are relatively safe and are accounted for by the Morning Walk team. Each section covers approximately 1.5 kilometers, with Playa Ventanas being the longest. We aim to cover this distance in 20 minutes with a 20-minute break at the end of each sweep. Usually completing 6-8 sweeps per patrol, we walk around 9-12 kilometers each night. That distance is shortened significantly if a turtle comes up the beach.

When we encounter a turtle, the first step is determining what stage she is at in the nesting process. All species follow the same basic routine which consists of emerging, body pitting, digging an egg chamber, laying eggs, covering the nest, and returning to the sea. Leatherbacks (Dermochelys coriacea) are different in that they undergo an addition stage called camouflaging. This is simply making additional body pits, or largely disturbed areas of sand, which conceal the true location of their clutch of eggs. After we have determined what the turtle is doing, we begin preparations for a host of tasks. Priorities include getting an egg count or catching the eggs in a bag for relocation, inserting a thermocouple into the clutch of eggs for temperature monitoring, and getting ID numbers from the turtle. Turtles are tagged with PIT tags, which is the same method I have used before on Boreal Toads. It is a little computer chip that gets inserted into the shoulder and provides a unique ID number when scanned. These individual turtles can be tracked as they arrive multiple times throughout the season. Some have been encountered on nesting beaches for multiple seasons. We also measure the carapace (shell) length and width for each turtle and report any scars/wounds they may have acquired. Most of this work is done during the egg laying process when the turtle is in a sort of trance and seems relatively unaware of their surroundings. There are additional data collection tasks that we see to, however they are part of ongoing research projects and vary from season to season.

After the excitement of a nesting turtle we continue sweeping the beach looking for others. It makes for a busy night when we have multiple turtles, yet this is a rare occurrence. Sea turtles are not as abundant as they use to be. Due to drastically declining populations of the Eastern Pacific Leatherbacks, we are fortunate to see multiple turtles each week. In fact, we are fortunate to be able to see them at all.