For the second trimester of my LEEP, I will be doing an internship with the Leatherback Trust located in Playa Grande (20 minutes from my school).  My mentor is named Tera Dornfeld,who is originally from Wisconcin and has been working as a Leatherback Trust field biologist for the past 6 years.  Here is a map of the location of the Leatheack Trust.

Here is information about the Leatherback Trust....

The Leatherback Trust is a non-profit foundation established by James R. Spotila, Ph.D. to save the leatherback turtle and other sea turtles from extinction. The Leatherback Trust scientists were instrumental in founding a new national park, Parque Marino Las Baulas, on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. The park protects the most important leatherback nesting beaches in the Pacific Ocean. Our scientists have trained park rangers and guides, worked with local school children and advised the local community on living in harmony with the leatherbacks. Before the Park was established poachers took 100% of nests. Now almost all nests are protected and a hatchery protects nests that would be washed away by high tides or eaten by predators. Now thousands of hatchlings crawl to the ocean every season where five years ago only a few survived. 

On Wednesday, January 23rd, I met Tera for the first time.  She is the person I will be working with this trimester. We went out to a nest site and as we began to excavate it, we discovered that it was actually two different nest sights that were layered upon each other.  First we tried to located the older eggs, but only found the newer, unhatched eggs.  So they had to stop in fear of disrupting the undeveloped eggs.  We then  moved on to an Olive Ridley turtle nest where we found one baby turtle that was unable to make it’s way out of the nest and out to the sea.   We put the hatchling into a bucket with a little sand and water so that it can be released later.  The plan is to release them at night not only because they could die from the heat of the day,  but also because of predators that might want to eat them as they walk slowly to the water.  It is also safer for them to go at night time when they are less visible.

Here are some pictures from the dig sites and a couple of videos of the turtle moving around in the bucket that I carried back in to the center.  The best part was showing the baby turtle to people on the beach and explaining to them about turtles and turtle conservation.

Leatherback Hatchery Visit

On January 30th, which was my brother William’s 7^th birthday, my family and I (without Marissa, who was camping with her 4th grade class) went to the turtle hatchery in Playa Grande. Our  whole family was invited to help the scientists at the Leatherback Trust dig up the last nest of the year there in the hatchery. Eggs are moved here to the hatchery when a turtle lays her eggs in a poor location, like too close to the waterline.  When there are no eggs in the nest, the hatchery is used for experiments. The hatchery is located just above the dry sand on the beach.

 

The experiment currently going on now, is to see if water affects the temperature of the nests. They are studying this because of global warming, which may make the nest too hot or may not produce enough males to have a sustainable population of sea turtles. When the nest is cooler, more males hatch, however if it’s too cold then the eggs will not hatch either. When the nest is warmer, more females hatch, but when it is too hot the embryo will cook and not hatch.

 

 

When the scientist’s begin digging up this Olive Ridley sea turtle nest, they dig slowly and carefully. As he dug further and further down into the sand, he would push his hand into the sand to look for the egg chamber and if there were any baby turtles near the surface. He dug a ways down and found one.

 

 

(That's me in the red shirt and baseball hat...)

Baby Olive Ridley hatchling that had hatched but not come out of the nest yet.  The heat from the sand told him instinctively that it was not safe to come out that he needed to wait until it got cooler (night time) so he was very sleepy.

 

As the biologist found turtles, eggs, and egg shells, we took measurements and recorded them.

 

 

A little later, close to the chamber, he found four more clumped together for 5 in total.

 

 

 After that, he dug down into the nest and pulled out all the dead baby turtles and empty or not hatched eggs and placed them on this screen to let the sand sift thru to the bucket.

 

 

The scientists sorted them into four different categories:

1.)    A undeveloped egg

2.)   Partially developed/blood noticeable in embryo  

3.)   Fully developed but did not hatch.

4.)   Fully developed baby turtles that hatched but died

 

 

Once they completed this process, they filled up a bucket a few times with the left over sand from the nest and buried it down near the water line. They did this because the sand is considered to be contaminated and they want the sand in the nest to be as clean as possible for next year. So after that they fill up the bucket with new sand and replaced the old sand with new sand to fill the hole where the nest was.

 

 

William was allowed to carry the baby turtles in a bucket of wet sand, back to the base of operation at the Leatherback Trust. Then the bucket is stored in a dark shed, for safe keeping till that night when they would release them to the surf. When they are released, they are put only a couple feet from the water line so that it is familiar with the sand and has more energy. You see, scientists think that sea turtles remember the beach by walking across it when they are babies and this is why they put them near the water line and not in the water.