As the title says, I wish to discuss something serious today. Up until this point my blogs have been overwhelming excited and enthusiastic. We have performed some riveting and joyous activities on this trip, most of which I will never personally forget. However, yesterday something occured that I thought I would enjoy, but took a negative turn upon experience. You will notice that I did not post yesterday; this is because I wished to mull over and think about my response to what I witnessed.
We were asked two evenings ago if we wanted to go to a turtle refuge to witness baby sea turtles make their way to the ocean. Almost unanimously a yes was heard, I among them. The next day, after spending the afternoon at the beach we began to drive to the refuge and were told that if we washed our hands and made sure there was no bug spray or anything that would harm the sea turtles we would actually be able to touch them. This was the first time that I wasn't thrilled about this trip, which is strange because getting to hold a baby sea turtle sounds amazing, right? The issue I was beginning to have went back to our visit to Tortuguero in Costa Rica. There was also a turtle refuge there, except they were very careful about how the handled the turtles and the beach. You were not to touch the turtles, and we were also informed that light disoriented them and because of this flash on cameras was not allowed and the city that was built on the beach could not put any lights that reached over onto the beach over the natural foliage between the protected beach and the village. They were very, very careful to show tourists the turtles, but also to make them realize just how fragile they can be if not handled correctly. Because of this, wariness crept in upon hearing that WE, untrained tourists, would get to actually hold the turtles.
We arrived and a basket of baby sea turtles were brought out for us to see. These turtles were rescued from the beach earlier that day. This occurred because during mid-day heat many marine biologists suggest that the baby turtles cannot handle the heat and will thus parish. The turtles were collected and stored for night time release. This was done by individuals that work at the refuge, and so I will hope are trained. Many refuges do this, and so I feel like this is good and useful. Many refuges also actually harvest the eggs and incubate them to further increase the survival chances. This practice is good, in my opinion, and so I commend them for doing this. What I take some issue with is the fact that when we were told that we could handle the turtles , no instruction was given as to how to handle the turtles. a baby turtle's shell can actually be somewhat soft and if not handled with proper care there is the risk of actually breaking the turtle's shell, and in the process breaking its back. Also, when we were informed that we were able to take pictures there was no request to leave flash off. The concern about the exposure to light that we witnessed in Tortuguero was not here.
When the turtles were released onto the beach, many simply sat still disoriented and tired from being handled by us. Afterward we walked around the beach looking for some that were being freshly hatched or a mother coming to lay her eggs. We returned to the sight of release to see that 3 of them, which is about half of the batch, had not moved from the spot we placed them on the beach. These turtles have an almost negligible chance of surviving the night. This is not what a normal healthy turtle would do. This may be due to a number of things, of which I may be completely unaware, but given the way that the turtles were handled previous to release it does not seem outrageous to suggest that our handling of the turtles played a part.
I wish to reiterate that this group is doing some good. They are raising awareness. They are also performing actions that other turtle refuges are also doing, such as relocating any turtles that are hatched during the sweltering day until the cooler evening and patrolling the beach for poachers. However, I do believe some more education as to how to properly handle and interact with the sea turtles is in order. I also believe that tourists, such as ourselves, should not have been allowed to handle them for the benefit of the turtles.
linked below are my up-to-date pictures of our trip so far.
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