TORTUGUERO, Costa Rica - There are no roads to the national park here, nestled as it is between the Caribbean Sea and miles of brackish mangrove swamps. Yet several times annually, two great migrations collide at this place: the sea turtles who swim thousands of miles to claw their way up the beaches to nest, and some 35,000 tourists, who snake their way in hired boats up the canals from Moin and Saripiqui for a chance to see a massive 400-pound tortuga firsthand.
By starlight, a two-hour hunt for a nesting turtle
Twelve of us circle about our guide on a soccer field in Tortuguero village. It’s just after 10 p.m., and we wait for signals from the beach. This waiting is part of the new system of turtle-gazing, our guide, Alex, tells us.
Five years ago, he would have led us to the beach, stuck his finger in the air, and chosen on a whim whether to lead north or south. Then we would have walked for an hour, maybe finding a turtle, maybe not, but trudging on nonetheless until it was time to turn around and march back.
Now we wait as rangers walk the beach with red-filtered flashlights and walkie-talkies. When they come across a turtle, they radio in to our guide with the sector and marker number from the posts spread about 330 feet apart along the edge of the beach. Then we rise and walk along the trail set back from the beach until we reach the marker.
Alex kills time disseminating some basic biology and some general history of this place, named not for the turtles but for the tortugueros - the men who, until recently, turned most of the creatures who came ashore into soup. As turtle populations declined, Costa Rica in 1975 declared Tortuguero, one of the most important nesting grounds in the world, a protected national park. The result should become apparent in the next several years, as the hatchlings of those early days return here to nest for the first time. Green turtles, which we are hoping to spot tonight, don’t lay their first eggs until the age of 25 or 30.
A red light flashes from the beach. The radio crackles. One of the searchers has found a turtle, about 600 feet south. We pair off and snake around village houses to the trail, and then out to the beach, flashlights, cameras, anything that might scare a nesting turtle back into the sea relegated to our pockets.
We’re not far from the village when we reach her. She is about 40 feet from us, a little more than halfway down the beach, and we pause as, with flippers like boomerangs, she heaves her body in two-foot spurts toward the water. We move close enough to hear the sand move under her shell. Then she is in the surf. We watch as a wave breaks, then she is gone. She leaves no eggs, just a hole dug too close to the village.
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