Costa Rica’s Olive Ridley Sea Turtles
A very long time ago, the first olive ridley sea turtles began swimming on our planet. Today, these ancient turtles are endangered, a fact that is really almost unfathomable because, after all, they have been with us—before there was an us— more than one hundred million years.
Need some perspective about just how long a hundred million years are? Consider T Rex, the mightiest dinosaur ever. This “Terrible Lizard” roamed North America sixty-five million years ago, and it ate olive ridleys when they came onto beaches to lay their eggs.
Over uncountable eons, these beings have flourished, despite being prey for nearly everything under the sun for tens of millions of generations. Probably thirty million generations were preyed upon by dinosaurs and other reptiles and fish before the first T Rex evolved and, since then, another 70,000,000 generations have fed a lot of critters. Still, they flourished.
They even survived the greatest extinction on the face of the planet. In fact though all of the mighty dinosaurs perished—they lived and flourished.
Over millennia, spreading across the face of the earth, these oldest of all reptiles populated every temperate and tropical ocean. From the Arabian Sea to the east Atlantic coast of the Americas and from India to the Pacific coast of the New World, they thrived all around the world. Tens upon tens of millions.
When Americans began to watch “I Love Lucy” the seas were still full of these turtles. The Pacific coast of Mexico alone had ten million olive ridley nests when the first episode of that TV show aired, each with about 100 eggs per clutch. Maybe a billion eggs were laid along just one coast of that country in just one year–1951—and these animals were found virtually every place that there were warm or temperate waters. The number of eggs was limitless.
Of course, where there is a limitless resource, there is money to be had. With so many eggs that were so easily gathered and so much profit to be made, entrepreneurs put together massive pack trains of horses and mules and brought them to the beaches. These pack animals carried off hundreds of millions of eggs each nesting season, year-after-year. And, to the surprise of some, it came as a shock that within twenty years, there was only one nest in one year on a beach where there had been several hundred thousand when Desi, Lucy, Ethel, and Fred made us laugh the first time. Alas, this catastrophe was being replicated all around the world.
At the same time, many countries opened sea turtle fisheries.
The result? From limitless to endangered in a couple of decades. A single generation of humans nearly accomplished what seemed impossible: nearly destroying in the blink of an eye what had taken 100,000,000 generations to create.
Fortunately, some countries belatedly realized the extent of depredation and began taking steps to conserve and protect these turtles. Tiny Costa Rica has helped lead the way, creating wildlife reserves and working with dedicated conservationists and local residents to not only conserve what is left but to rebuild stocks.
Today, Ostional Beach, on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, may have the world’s largest arribadas of olive ridleys. Every month, often when the moon is in its last quarter, female turtles gather just offshore and suddenly come to the beach en masse, day after day. The greatest arribadas are often in October, November, and December and the biggest mass nesting in recent years was 500,000 females coming ashore in 1995. If you want to experience extraordinary Costa Rica ecotourism, this is a must-see.
Costa Rica has come to understand that these extraordinary creatures are worth more than the value of their meat and eggs. And Mexico? Remember that pathetic single nest on a beach once filled with turtles? Well, the government finally decided to protect it. Slowly, it recovered to 50,000 nests in 1988—and then up to several hundred thousand nests in 2000.
With a little help from Nature and mankind, the olive ridley will have another 100,000,000 years.
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I didnt know this facts about olive ridley sea turtles…thanks for sharing