The Tagging Green Sea Turtle Expedition at Costa Rica
A Costa Rica satellite and fin tagging expedition recently got underway at Cocos Island to study its green sea turtle and hawksbill visitors.
Marine researchers sail Costa Rica open waters for at least 30 hours in their quest of knowledge about these ancient marine animals. Think of what they do as a kind of working Costa Rica vacation that, hopefully, will contribute to preserving these marvelous animals now sadly endangered in much of their range.
Cocos Island, once described by the world famous marine explorer, Jacque Cousteau, as the most beautiful island he had ever visited, lies some 340 miles off the shore of Costa Rica, about halfway to the Galapagos Islands.
It was not the pretty beaches or palms that enthralled the Captain. Its beauty lies off its shores, under water, in a place that Costa Ricans have voted one of the Seven Wonders of Cost Rica.
Cocos Island has fired the imagination of men who sailed the sea or imagined its remote mystery for at least 300 years and today it is probably the most famous island in the world.
Everybody knows about Cocos Island, whether living in Bangalor, India or Bangor, Maine, the great cities of Europe or the Outback of Australia.
Say what? You've never heard of it? Well, perhaps you know it by its more well known name: Jurassic Park. That's what novelist Michael Crichton called this remote island, which he used as its setting.
Or, maybe, when you were a kid, you called it Treasure Island.
130 years before there was a Captain Jack Sparrow, another famous pirate, Long John Silver, captured the imagination of childhood readers and even Walt Disney. Some people think Cocos served as inspiration for that Robert Lewis Stevenson classic.
However, setting aside tall tales, this little island was a popular Costa Rica vacation spot for real pirates. Well off the sailing lanes of the English fleets, it offered a safe sanctuary and an abundance of coconuts, a favorite ingredient in pirate drink.
It also was a great place to bury treasure and, indeed, even to this day, two fabulous booties, the Lima Treasure and Devonshire Treasure, may still be hidden there.
Cocos Island is considered by many divers to be the finest place on earth for large marine animal viewing.
There is an incredible array of fish and marine mammals, from sharks to barracuda, and everything in between, not to mention porpoises and whales, in its fertile waters.
Sea turtles have been roaming the oceans of the world since the days of dinosaurs. Imagine T Rex preying on them 200 million years ago when they paddled ashore to lay their eggs.
These creatures are found in all the oceans of the world except the Arctic and Antarctic.
Once, the sheer numbers of green sea turtle, hawksbill, leatherback and other species were so huge that mariners, lost in the fog, found land by listening for the sounds of sea turtles paddling towards nesting grounds.
Unfortunately, no more. Today, our unrestrained beach development and destruction of their nests have put them at risk.
Millions were slaughtered in South America to make expensive Italian shoes.
Huge pack caravans carried off billions of eggs from the beaches of Mexico. Even today eggs are illegally harvested to be sold in taverns as aphrodisiacs.
However, many countries around the world, aided by researchers and conservationists have taken note of drastically declining numbers of marine turtles.
Captain Cousteau once famously predicted: "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, some governments and conservationists have not abandoned hope and are working to turn around the decline turtle populations.
Researchers 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 movements 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 Newfoundland, Canada.
Perhaps it is not too late for these survivors.
We cannot undo the past but we can write our own future.
Author Victor Krumm lives in Costa Rica. Visit his popular site Costa Rica Vacations and check out the spectacular Seven Wonders of Costa Rica
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