A Costa Rica scientific tagging expedition recently got underway at Cocos Island to study its green sea turtle and hawksbill visitors.
Conservation organizations and marine researchers spent some 30 hours going to the island in their quest for more knowledge about these ancient marine animals.
They are engaged in a kind of scientific working Costa Rica vacation that they anticipate will contribute to preserving these incredible animals now endangered in much of their range.
Cocos Island, once described by the famed oceanographer, Jacque Cousteau, as the most beautiful island he had ever visited, lies some 340 miles off the Pacific coastline of Costa Rica, almost halfway to the Galapagos Islands.
It was not the pretty beaches or palms that captured the imagination of 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. It is there that one finds incomparable treasure: tremendous schools of fish, porpoises and whales and turtles.
Since the days of dinosaurs sea turtles have roamed the Seven Seas of the world.
These ancient creatures swim every sea except the frozen Antarctic and Arctic.
Once, the numbers of green sea turtle, hawksbill, leatherback and other species were so massive that mariners, lost in the fog, sometimes found land by listening for sea turtles paddling towards nesting grounds.
Unfortunately , no more. Today, our indiscriminate development of beaches and destruction of their nests have put them at risk. Millions were slaughtered in South America to make stylish Italian shoes, combs, and household ornaments.
Jacque Yves Cousteau presciently remarked that: "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." A being visiting from another galaxy might conclude that such a result would be just.
However, international conservation organizations are trying to restore at least some turtle populations. International treaties relating to sea turtles are now in place, though many countries allow disregard of them. Conservation organizations, scientists, and researchers have begun tagging ocean roaming turtles in far away places like Cocos Island, the Galapagos, Columbia, and other areas. Some animals are fitted with numbered flipper tags while others bear satellite transmitters that are tracked around the clock. It is all part of an effort to track their travel patterns.
We cannot undo the past but the volunteers, scientists and researchers, and volunteers know that the future for sea turtles is yet to be inscribed.
The writer, Victor Krumm, posts from tropical Costa Rica. Follow his lovely site Costa Rica Vacations and for info about great beaches check out Costa Rica Beaches
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