Travel Blog Costa Rica

The Hawksbill sea turtle is high on the list of endangered species and part of it has to do with its shell. Another name for the Hawksbill sea turtle is ‘tortoise shell’. You’ll guess it the Hawksbill’s shell is wanted for tortoise used in jewelery, furniture inlays and other decorative objects. Although a range of measures were taken worldwide to protect the Hawksbill sea turtle, there are still violations of the ban on hunting and selling the shells. It is estimated that there are no more than 23,000 Hawksbill females in the oceans. Most of their time the Hawksbill sea turtles spend in shallow waters close to shore making them an easy prey for poachers. Furthermore the Hawksbill females don’t nest every year. It can vary from once every two to five years before the Hawksbills come to the shore where they were born. They make two to four nests with intervals of two weeks and each nest contains around 160 eggs. Compared to the Green sea turtle and the Leatherback sea turtle the Hawksbill is slightly smaller, reaching a maximum length around 90 centimetres. The Hawksbill sea turtle weighs up to 60 kilograms. The Hawksbill is also the most tropical of all the sea turtles and is found in the tropical waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean where it prefers reefs and rocky environments. Their diet is mainly squid, shrimp, sponges and anemones. The shape of its head and the hooked bill, resulting in a comparison with the head of a hawk, is the reason for their name. By eating of the reefs the Hawksbill helps to maintain the delicate balance of the also more and more threatened corals. There are several organisations active in Costa Rica for the protection of the sea turtles like the Caribbean Conservation Corporation. Following the link will reveal a treasure of information regarding the sea turtles who have inhabited the oceans for more than 110 million years.

The green sea turtle is the largest sea turtle with a hard shell. It is named the green turtle, because of its colour. The body fat turns green caused by the sea turtle’s diet based on algae, which results in the discoloration. The green sea turtle can grow to humongous proportions. The biggest green sea turtle ever found measured more than one and a half metre and weighed way over 390 kilos. Normally they reach a length somewhere between one and one metre twenty, with a weight between 135 and 180 kilos. The green sea turtle, unlike his family members such as the Leatherback, is strictly vegetarian and lives on algae and sea grass. The habitat of the green turtle is confined to tropical and moderate waters and the female turtles come back to nest on the same beaches where they were born. This means often that green sea turtles migrate thousands of miles to find the right beach. Not every year the female green sea turtles nest, it can be with intervals of 2, 3 or even more years before the turtle returns. Because the green turtle relies on beds of sea grass to feed on, they spend their lives close to shore, which makes them extra vulnerable for the threats caused by the fishing industry. Many turtles get stuck in fishing nets or are ‘harvested’ as very lucrative by-catch. During a nesting season a female green turtle can come to shore three to five times and delivers every time around 115 eggs. In Costa Rica the green sea turtle can be found on the Caribbean and Pacific coast. On the Pacific coast most beaches where the green turtle can be found are in the Province of Guanacaste, but also on the Central and South Pacific coast of the Province of Puntarenas there are special protected areas, such as Manuel Antonio National Park close to Quepos and the National Ballena Marine Park close to Dominical. On the Caribbean Coast in the Province of Limon the green sea turtle comes ashore on the beaches of Parismina and Tortuguero in the north. But also close to Puerto Viejo and Manzanillo in the Talamanca region, south of the Gandoca – Mazanillo Wildlife Refuge, the beaches of the village of Gandoca close to the Panamanian border are frequented by the green sea turtle. It is estimated that there are approximately 88,000 nesting females worldwide, more than there are left of Leatherback turtles.

The Leatherback is the biggest of the sea turtles and his name derives from the fact that he has a leathery, soft scale in contrast to the other sea turtles, who have hard scales. With a length up to 185 centimetres and a weight up to 700 kilograms it is an impressive creature. It is also the sea turtle that has the biggest habitat and is found in almost every ocean on the planet and lays eggs on the shores of every continent except Antarctica. Because the Leatherback spends most of it’s time in very deep water, most of its behaviour is unknown. Only for nesting the Leatherbacks leave their deep sea environment, where they can reach depths of more than one kilometre. The primary food source for the Leatherback sea turtle is jellyfish. It still is mystery how the Leatherback sea turtles can navigate in open sea, since they have limited vision and there are no visual anchor points to give direction. One of the theories is that the sea turtles use the earth’s magnetic field or use the position of the moon to navigate. After a short mating period the female Leatherback sea turtle is ready to nest and chooses a beach close to deeper water such as Parismina, Tortuguero or Gandoca to lay her eggs. But also on the Pacific coast in the Province of Guanacaste on Playa Grande and on the beaches of the National Park Las Baulas Leatherbacks arrive. The Leatherback sea turtle digs a hole of more than 60 centimetres and can lay eighty to one hundred eggs. Afterwards the nest is carefully camouflaged and sometimes even fake nests are made to mislead predators. The young turtles break the eggshell with a special temporary tooth and crawl to the surface to start their run for the sea. It is calculated that only one in thousand will reach adulthood. This statistic is a delicate balance that has been reached over the more than 110 million years that the sea turtles exist. The balance has been abruptly destroyed by humans who considered the eggs as a delicacy and aphrodisiac. Combined with the pollution of the oceans with plastic that the Leatherbacks mistake for jellyfish, it has resulted in the fact that the Leatherback sea turtle is the most endangered specie with an estimated population of no more than 35,000 individuals. Although the northern part of the Caribbean coast of the Province of Limon is the most famous for the arrival of the sea turtles, the less known Gandoca beach hosts between 500 and 1,000 nests. The Leatherback sea turtles arrive in the months of March to July. Costa Rica’s government has stimulated awareness programs for sustainable development, which has resulted in many initiatives to save the endangered sea turtles. After six years of the project in Gandoca the survival rate of sea turtle nests improved from 5 to 95%.