By Amy Waksmonski
The time of the year that I went, the beginning of January, is the end of the season for the turtle project, so there wasn't as much work to do as there normally is, plus there twice as many volunteers there as there normally is, so there was a lot of hanging out, reading, playing cards, playing volleyball, surfing, etc…
The time of the year I was there, turtles were no longer coming up to the shores to lay eggs; that part of the season ended at the end of December. So the main focus of the project was to protect and watch over the nests of turtle eggs. These nests were watched over 24 hours a day in 2 hour shifts. One person would be on the shift in daylight hours, and two people would be on the shift during the night because turtle eggs normally hatch at night (which made it extremely difficult to shoot!).
When turtle eggs hatch (which only happened once when I was there), the volunteers weighed and measured 10 of the turtles (several of them hatch at a time. The nest that hatched when I was there had about 80-90 turtles) and then place the turtles in the sand a few meters from the shore and then watch over them as the crawl out to the sea.
The volunteers also had to clean the residency daily, wash their own dishes, and take care of the hatchery, which could include repairs, moving sand, etc… The moving of the sand was difficult work, but everyone had fun working hard together. The purpose of moving sand was to get clean sand into the hatchery. Wet sand near the shore is clean sand, so people would shovel wet sand into bags, and then carry the bags into the hatchery to be dumped. Mainly the women did the shoveling while the men did the carrying, though a few women did carry some sand.
Jorge excavates eggs
If you liked this, you might also be interested in
http://www.intercoined.com/volunteers, http://www.intercoined.com/programs-by-age, http://www.intercoined.com/spanish-courses/costa-rica
The time of the year I was there, turtles were no longer coming up to the shores to lay eggs; that part of the season ended at the end of December. So the main focus of the project was to protect and watch over the nests of turtle eggs. These nests were watched over 24 hours a day in 2 hour shifts. One person would be on the shift in daylight hours, and two people would be on the shift during the night because turtle eggs normally hatch at night (which made it extremely difficult to shoot!).
When turtle eggs hatch (which only happened once when I was there), the volunteers weighed and measured 10 of the turtles (several of them hatch at a time. The nest that hatched when I was there had about 80-90 turtles) and then place the turtles in the sand a few meters from the shore and then watch over them as the crawl out to the sea.
The volunteers also had to clean the residency daily, wash their own dishes, and take care of the hatchery, which could include repairs, moving sand, etc… The moving of the sand was difficult work, but everyone had fun working hard together. The purpose of moving sand was to get clean sand into the hatchery. Wet sand near the shore is clean sand, so people would shovel wet sand into bags, and then carry the bags into the hatchery to be dumped. Mainly the women did the shoveling while the men did the carrying, though a few women did carry some sand.
If you liked this, you might also be interested in http://www.intercoined.com/volunteers, http://www.intercoined.com/programs-by-age, http://www.intercoined.com/spanish-courses/costa-rica
