Learning from Experience : A Report from Mexico’s Turtle Trip 2000

Abstract

On October first at about five in the morning I found myself on a small plane with 15 other students and chaperones. After almost a year of planning, I was finally going. Our group was the Turtle Trippers of 2000. We had researched, planned, raised money, and we, the dedicated students and adults from Moscow High School Environmental Club (in Moscow, Idaho), were finally going to Mexico, the trip offered by the One World Workforce (OWW). (1) Our Goal: learn about endangered sea turtles. Our Mission: help the newly laid eggs and hatchlings. Our Focus: the Olive Ridley Sea Turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea). Our Sight: La Gloria Beach in Jalisco, Mexico. After landing safely in Puerta Vallerta and doing a bit of sight seeing, our little group traveled three hours south to the gorgeous beach of La Gloria. An immediate orientation and pitching of tents commenced, and in about half an hour we were ready to go. The camp was set up right on the beach with the nursery for the baby turtles out in front. A long clay building with open-air rooms occupied most of camp leaving space for our tents pitched up right in front of it. To the left of the shelter stood a large sink made of stone and a faucet. Out back were the four pieces of rusty tin and some tarp put together to form a space for washing, and on the right about 30 feet away was the outhouse. For a bit of clarification, conditions were less then comfortable. We were allowed one bucket of water a day to be used at our expense (including for showers). The outhouse was little more then a hole in the ground that stank quite a bit and after doing your business, paper was only allowed to be thrown into a small bin on the side, which you had to burn later. You also had to check for scorpions before sitting down. In fact you had to check for scorpions before doing much of anything. Heat was another issue, as most know who have been to Mexico. Maybe it was not such an issue of heat, but of humidity. No matter what we did, we became covered in sweat. We soon got to learning about OWW and what we would be doing. Our guides from the organization were named Deb and Heather. The OWW is an organization that sets up conservation programs (like this) in different parts of the world and then has different groups of people (like us) come and help. Antonio was the head of the camp, a biologist from the University of Guadalajara. While his English was sometimes hard to follow we soon grew to like him. We would be staying there along with the rest of the people at camp: Mexican students who were working for Antonio and helping with his research, a wife of one of the students, her two children, her new born baby, and a volunteer from Great Britain. We would be working mainly with the olive ridley. Of the eight species of sea turtle left, the olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea) is the smallest and most abundant. They range from 51 to 75 cm long and weigh from 33 to 43 kg. Living mostly in the northern hemispheres, the olive ridley can be found by Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Madras and Orissa States (India). Their favorite places to breed are Mexico and Costa Rica. La Gloria Beach also has other species of turtles, yet these are much less common like the leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea), the pacific green (Chelonia mydas agassizii), and the hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata). When it began to get dark, our anticipation grew. At about 10 in the evening, we would be going out with Antonio and starting to patrol the beaches. Which meant we would walk down the beach for about two hours and then turn around and walk back. Exciting, huh? Not really, the exciting thing was what we were looking for; either tracks of a mother sea turtle, or the actual turtle coming up from the beach to dig out her nest and lay her eggs. Flashlights, long pants, sneakers, bug repellant, canteens, and cameras were put on, applied, or clipped on, and at about 9:30 p. …