Sep/090
Costa Rica Marine Turtle Tagging Project
Recently, a Costa Rica based research satellite and fin tagging program got underway at Cocos Island to study the migration patterns of sea turtle.
Marine researchers travel Costa Rica open waters for at least 30 hours in their quest of migration habits about these ancient marine animals.
Imagine what they do as a kind of working Costa Rica vacation that, hopefully, will contribute to saving these marvelous animals now sadly endangered in much of their range.
Cocos Island, once described by the famed oceanographer, Jacque Cousteau, as the most beautiful island he had ever seen, lies some 340 miles off the Pacific coastline of Costa Rica, nearly halfway to the Galapagos Islands.
It was not the lovely palms or beaches that enthralled Captain Cousteau. Its beauty is just off its shores, under water, in a place that Costa Ricans have chosen as one of the Seven Wonders of Costa Rica. In those waters one finds incomparable treasure: tremendous schools of fish, whales, porpoises, and turtles.
Marine turtles have roamed the world's oceans since the days of dinosaurs. Imagine mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex preying on them 200 million years ago when they landed ashore to nest.
These beings roam every sea except the frozen Antarctic and Arctic.
Once, the populations of the half dozen species of sea turtles were so huge that seamen, lost in fog sometimes found land by listening for sea turtles paddling towards nesting grounds.
Once, not so long ago the populations of these marine reptiles were still so seemingly without end that seamen lost in the fog sometimes found their way by listening for sea turtles paddling towards ancient nesting grounds. For eons, sea turtles provided food for every sort of creature. Over eons, billions and billions were eaten by and trillions and trillions of eggs fed birds and animals, including man, for innumerable generations, yet the species' flourished. However, in just a few short, recent generations, man's unrestrained development along every coast and wanton destruction of these animals and their eggs have put these creatures at risk. Whole populations were killed off in South America to make stylish but expensive shoes for Europeans.
Captain Cousteau predicted 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."
But, conservation organizations have not abandoned hope and are working to turn around the decline turtle populations. Conservation groups are now tagging pelagic turtles like the green sea turtle in far-away places like Cocos Island. Some turtles are fitted with flipper tags while others bear satellite transmitters to help track their migrations and it has been discovered that some species swim thousands and thousands of miles of oceans, from tropical waters to the cold and deep waters off Canada.
We cannot undo the past but the people who tag sea turtles know that marine turtles can survive another 200 million years if we lend them a hand.
The writer, Victor Krumm writes from tropical Costa Rica. Follow his lovely site Costa Rica Vacations and for info about marine turtles check out Sea Turtles