Controvertido,Amado,Repudiado,y existente Ostional

Egg harvest in Ostional, an analysis by Jim Spotila, Drexel University

de Randall Arauz, el miércoles, 19 de octubre de 2011, 8:34

The egg harvest at Ostional!

Many people have been receiving copies in emails of a series of pictures of people collecting sea turtle eggs in Costa Rica. Many people have asked me if they are true, where they come from and what they mean. The emails indicate that the eggs are being “stolen” and then sold. The process does not look very nice in that people are down digging in the sand, turtles are trying to lay their eggs and people are carrying big sacks of eggs off the beach. However, the pictures are misleading because the eggs are not being stolen. I discuss this situation in detail in my book “Saving Sea Turtles: Extraordinary Stories from the Battle against Extinction” and give the history of the olive ridley situation at Ostional. I have been following this story since 1983 when I went to Ostional with Dr. Douglas Robinson who helped organize the Refuge and the harvest as a conservation experiment. You can read about it in Chapter 11 “Ostional The Egg-stained sands of Costa Rica” for the entire story. In the meantime, some facts may be helpful:

The quick answer

These are pictures of a legal harvest of olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea) eggs at Ostional Wildlife Refuge in Guanacaste Province on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. The local people are allowed to collect eggs the first day of the three day nesting event or arribada (arrival). They sell the eggs and support themselves that way. We do not know what effect this practice has on the turtle population. We do know that this practice is used to justify the stealing (poaching) of eggs from every unprotected sea turtle nesting beach in Costa Rica. The overall effect on sea turtle protection in Costa Rica is negative. Ostional is not a jewel of sustainable management of sea turtle populations. It is an economic success for the local people, but that does not translate into a success for conservation.

The details

Olive ridleys come ashore about once a month throughout the year, but mostly in the rainy season, as a group called an arribada in Spanish. Often thousands of turtles come ashore over two or three days and lay their eggs. Most females appear to lay eggs one or two times a year. There may be from 500 turtles in the dryer months to 20,000 or more in the rainy months in an arribada.

Many years ago the beach was protected in a wildlife refuge and the few families that lived there were allowed to collect eggs to sell. The idea was to prevent all the eggs from being taken by illegal collectors- called poachers. That was in the early 1980’s. Since then the number of people living in the refuge as squatters (illegally) has grown exponentially to around 1000. They still collect eggs the first day of the arribada and take about the same number of eggs per person. So the total take has been growing tremendously.

However, the number of turtles has remained high and some claim that it has even been increasing. Unfortunately, there are no good data published to allow us to understand the real number of eggs being collected, the effect of the harvest on the turtles reproductive effort, the real number of turtles nesting and other important information about the situation. For many years biologists from the University of Costa Rica have been carrying out surveys, but they are paid by the village association and the data are: 1. Not generally available to other scientists and 2. Not very accurate. So we do not know what effect this harvest has- good or bad- on the turtle population.

There are current studies underway by Dr. Roldan Valverde from Southeast Louisiana State University and Carlos Orrego from Drexel University that will provide data on these subjects when they are completed. From the research of Dr. Shaya Honarvar at Drexel University we know that the number of hatchlings produced from a square meter of beach from which eggs have been removed is lower than from a beach where eggs have been left alone, even though turtles dig up nests as the arribada goes on. Dr. Honarvar also showed that there are large concentrations of bacteria in arribada beaches. Dr. Gerald Soslau of Drexel University has shown that some of the bacteria on and around leatherback turtle eggs are disease producing. We can assume the same is true for those around ridley eggs. A recent MS study by Ricardo A. Hernández Sánchez, a student at the Universidad Nacional of Costa Rica has shown that the excess eggs in an arribada normally go to support the terrestrial ecosystem of plants, insects, birds, reptiles and mammals so they do not go to waste in a natural situation.

A final matter is that it is illegal to take sea turtle eggs from any other beach in Costa Rica. However, the fact is that eggs are poached from every sea turtle nesting beach in Costa Rica that is not actively protected in a national park or wildlife refuge. Eggs sold in the market can be either legal eggs from Ostional or illegal eggs from somewhere else. So the bottom line is that the pictures show a legal activity. It is dirty and it is not well understood. It is not well managed. It probably does not help the turtles. It does take important energy and matter away from the terrestrial ecosystem of the beach and nearby forest. Finally, the legal collection of sea turtle eggs at Ostional is a cover for the illegal collection of sea turtle eggs throughout the country and in fact justifies it. Poachers say- they can do it at Ostional so why can’t I do it here. That may be the greatest problem with this situation.

In conclusion, we should not encourage the taking of sea turtle eggs or turtles themselves, unless we can document that it fosters sea turtle conservation and does not produce markets for sea turtles and eggs from other locations. The egg harvest at Ostional fails on the second count, and perhaps the first, and should be ended.

What you can do

I invite you to visit the website of The Leatherback Trust at www.leatherback.org to see what we are doing to save sea turtles on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and elsewhere. The Leatherback Trust is a non profit organization that works to save sea turtles from extinction. We operate a field station www.goldringmarinestation.org at Playa Grande in Parque Nacional Las Baulas in Guanacaste Costa Rica in order to study and protect leatherback turtles, green turtles and olive ridley turtles. We also support research at Ostional and on other sea turtle beaches. You can donate to help our cause and volunteer through EARTHWATCH Institute to join one of our field teams as a research volunteer. Come and walk the beach to save the turtles. With your help we will turn the egg stained sands of Costa Rica into a real beacon of hope for sea turtles everywhere.

 

James R. Spotila, Ph.D.

Drexel University

Philadelphia, PA

and

The Leatherback Trust

October 18, 2011

Arribaba in Ostional

Location, ubicacion Geografica,Ostional centro

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=9.996926,-85.702876&spn=0.002832,0.004436&z=18&lci=com.panoramio.all&

La plaza de Futboll esta en el corazon de Ostional. nosotros estamos en la esquina identificados apropiadamente con rotulos de Cabinas y Restaurante

An article about the Ostional experience

by Victor C. Krumm

The teenage olive ridley sea turtle was only 15 as she waited 500 yards offshore in the warm, tropical eastern Pacific ocean off Ostional Beach in a small country that, more than five centuries earlier, Christopher Columbus had discovered and named “Costa Rica”, the “rich coast.”

The moon was in its last quarter. The afternoon October rains had passed as she waited expectantly, unaware of the lunar effect bringing her near.

A dozen yards away, another olive ridley sea turtle joined her, followed by a dozen, then hundreds, thousands, and soon tens of thousands, all waiting quietly. For epochs the moon has silently passed its everlasting phases that affect the world’s tides-and today it was bringing her ashore this night, just as it had led her forebears to ancestral nesting beaches for more than one hundred million years.

Just a few months before, this marine turtle was living way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Indeed, in March an ocean freighter had passed her more than 3,000 miles from Costa Rica. On that same day, the tens of thousands now alongside her had been distributed across more than a million square kilometers. But, nature is always magical and this year was no exception.

Though food was plentiful far out in the Pacific, something stirred within her. She and hundreds of thousands like her felt the same compulsion to return to Costa Rica. They had to go back to where they had arrived.

Now, months after something inside spoke to her, she waited in the soft light just a few hundred meters from her destination. She had swum so very far but now the silent voice that had led her here told her to wait. She was ready. Over the many weeks and thousands of miles she had swum she had met many different male olive ridley sea turtles in the clear ocean waters and several had bred her because, like her, they too were being affected by something unseen, a primeval force. Whatever it was, it was so compelling that her kind had been returning to the same Costa Rica beach since before the first dinosaur.

The marine turtle had hatched in 1995 at the very small Ostional Beach. Only a few hundred meters in length it is now part of Costa Rica’s Ostional National Wildlife Refuge and maybe the most important olive ridley nesting site on earth. In fact, perhaps half a million females had come ashore to nest in massive “arribadas” , wave-after-wave of turtles, the year she had hatched.

For fifteen years, the mother of this olive ridley joined massive Ostional arribadas annually and she would have done so again except that she drowned in an illegal shrimping net just a few weeks ago. Thousands more perished by long line commercial fishermen. Even more died unnecessarily by eating plastic bags carelessly discarded. So many have been killed, the race is endangered.

Of course, the tens of thousands of olive ridleys just offshore know none of this. As we look out over the water in the pale moonlight, there are now so many that it almost seems one could walk on their backs for at least a mile. We look in awe at the sheer magnitude of God’s creation. They don’t know or comprehend that they were on this planet long before the first Tyrannosaurus Rex. They don’t know that we are waiting for them to come ashore so that when they lay their eggs on this tiny wildlife refuge, men, women, and children will legally dig up nests and take 1,000,000 eggs in return for protecting the rest of the clutches and preserving the species. They only know that this is where they are meant to be.

Then, though no one knows why, it happens. It is as though the same quiet voice that told them to come and provided unerring directions to a tiny sand beach thousands of miles away, the same silent command that demanded they wait offshore, now tells them it is time to come ashore. As quietly as they first appeared offshore, as silently as they gathered for days and weeks, their patience has been rewarded. They begin to come to the beach. A single olive ridley marine turtle is followed by a second, then another and another. Soon there are hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands—even more than that. All on a particular little beach. They come in increasing numbers all night. More arrive in the day. All day, day after day. It is the magnificent Ostional Arribada of Costa Rica. As timeless as the moon itself, it is the spectacular reaffirmation of life itself.

About the Author:

The author writes about tropical Costa Rica in his beautiful website Costa Rica Vacations. Visit here to learn more about magnificent Costa Rica ecotourism Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory

Las maravillosas tortugas marinas de Ostional



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