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| Leatherback Tracks |
The
task of Morning Walk is quite possibly my favorite activity as a Sea Turtle
Biologist. It is one of the major activities that we are scheduled to do along
with the night patrols. In Spanish, this task is called “Censo”, which means census. On the nights where patrol teams end
before the 5 o'clock hour, an alternative team will go out and perform a beach
survey. Taking note of any turtle activity from the previous night and thereby effecting
a turtle census. Since Morning Walk begins at 5 am, it is unnecessary when the night
patrol team is already on the beach at that time. On those occasions, the night
patrol team needs to make sure the entire beach is cleared before heading in
for a long-awaited slumber. In either case, we can account for all of the turtle
activity on our beaches each night.
I
enjoy Morning Walk for several reasons. For starters, I don’t have to be up all
day and then all night. I can get a decent night’s sleep before starting my
shift in the morning. We start early enough and are able to witness the spectacular
sunrises stretching their way over Ventanas Rock which separates Playa Grande
from Playa Ventanas. It also only takes 2-3 hours to walk the entire beach,
depending on the amount of turtle activity needing to be recorded. Since I am
up early and breakfast isn’t until 11 am, I spend this time catching up on
entering my hatchery data into the computer. There are also many surprises to
be found early in the morning on the beaches of Costa Rica.
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| Leatherback Hatchlings |
On
this day, the 1st of January, I was fortunate to find an
emerging nest of Leatherback hatchlings. I could tell by the number of tiny
turtle tracks that most of these hatchlings had already found their way to ocean,
however a few of their brothers and sisters were still wiggling their way up
through nearly a meter of sand. I do not know if we can call them the first
turtles born in 2018, because they hatched some time prior to their emergence and
were also laid approximately 60 days previously. Regardless, it was an exciting morning to be on the beach.
We have found some startling objects washed up
on the beach and met some rather unique people. Most mornings were good, however,
there were some that were not so good. Abigail, another biologist, and I were
not assigned to patrol together for a while after having two unlucky Morning
Walk experiences. One was due to hazardous weather conditions that arose
partway into our survey. While we were waiting out the storm in the safety of
the research station, a Leatherback was up on the beach. This was the only
turtle of the season to come up in the morning, during a time in which we could
take photographs, and we missed her. There was really nothing we could have
done. The weather was too severe and I probably would not have wanted to have
my camera out in the rain like that anyway. The second unlucky Morning Walk experience
I had with Abigail is reserved for the next blog post.
