During this trip I had the opportunity of going to Costa Rica through the RSB program at Texas Tech University. During my volunteer-ship I worked with United Planet and ACI Costa Rica. United Planet is a non-profit organization which sends volunteers to 30 plus countries around the world to work on projects. ACI Costa Rica is an organization that immerses volunteers into the culture and the community of the location. The main issues we worked towards were environment conservation and turtle rescue. This is important because sea turtles are considered a keystone species, which means they play an important role in ocean ecosystems. Specifically, sea turtles help with maintaining healthy seagrass beds and coral reefs and also help to balance marine food webs while facilitating nutrient cycling from water to land.
I feel that this trip was a great learning experience. Over the course of this trip we worked on many things. We started our venture at an orientation camp. The orientation camp lasted for about a day and a half and was located a little outside San Jose.
The place where we stayed at was a friend of ACI Costa Rica, so they let us use their home for bedding and orientation camp. At the camp we had a wonderful cook named Tati. Tati made sure we were fed three meals a day and that we were full by the end. The food was honestly the best I’ve eaten in my entire life. At the Camp we learned many things. We learned general information about Costa Rica and ACI. Also, we did a couple group activities to help the transition to Costa Rica. The first activity was a stereotype game where Jessica, our ACI parner for this trip, put tags on our foreheads. These tags had basic stereotypes like gym girl, old man, and party animal. We had to act out the stereotype until the other person guessed what their tag said. This game mainly taught us to keep an open mind and to not stereotype during our journey forward. Although we all knew about stereotyping, it probably wasn’t on all of our minds at that point. I feel like the game was a nice little reminder before we started our work.
Our service work was located at a place called Junquillal. Junquillal is on the west coast of Costa Rica. When we arrived, we dropped off our stuff and went to the beach immediately. We got there just in time to see the sunset. We all started taking pictures of the sunset and the beach line, it was so beautiful. That night all the volunteers had dinner at Verdiazul. This was the organization where we would base our service during this trip. The next six days would be filled with many different tasks consisting of a beach clean-up, hatchery work almost every day, and night patrolling every night.
The beach clean-up was in the morning of the first day in Junquillal. Half of us were given bags and the other were given buckets. The bags were for trash and plastics while the buckets were for micro plastics. All the volunteers scattered all across the beach and slowly
made our way south. The heat from the sand and the sun made this task grueling for us all. I found a couple of cool items. I found three flipflops, a tank top, a diaper stuffed into a log, and a little plastic Mario figure, and that’s just scratching the surface of what I found. By the end of the clean-up, we all went back to Verdiazul. We managed to fill up two whole large garbage bags. I was fairly impressed with the shear amount of trash we got from just one sweep of the beach. At the start I didn’t think that we would find that much trash, the beach looked pretty clean as is. But it was surprising to see all the junk hiding under the sand and in the vegetation. We only did the beach clean-up once during our stay, but we were working in the hatchery almost daily.
The hatchery work we were doing was based around clearing nests that have recently hatched and replacing the sand. Once a nest hatched, we would determine a time for release. Mainly to allow temperature of the beach sand too cool so the turtles wouldn’t get burned during their release. Once the temperature was cooled, we all would take the baby turtles to where the eggs were recovered. This matters because when the turtle is grown and ready to lay eggs, they will come back to the same location where they hatched. Leading to more eggs being laid on this beach and being saved in the future. Once we have a hatched nest, we would have to dig out the “contaminated” sand.
This is to prevent bacterial infections to future eggs in that plot. Once the contaminated sand has been removed, we have to take out the baskets in the hole. These baskets can also hold bacteria and need to be washed in chlorine to sterilize them. Then we placed the basket back into the hole and fill in the gaps with clean sand. Making sure it was dark sand with very little shells. Once we cleaned a nest, we would have to wait a couple of days to let the temperature of the sand to settle or cool. The temperature of the sand is critical for the sex of the turtles. Female turtles occur at higher temperatures, but not too high because it can cause the egg to cook/boil. After a couple days the nest would be ready for eggs, where we would collect these during our nightly night patrols.
During night patrols we would walk down the beach looking for certain signs. Night patrols would be split into shifts and lasted until the sun came up in the morning. The main sign of identification was tracks. Sea turtle tracks are very distinct and are surprisingly easy to see in the pitch black. They look like a long dark streak across the sand. The tracks can tell you almost everything about the turtle if you know how to read them. The first thing is how many sets of tracks. Most turtles will come up and then go back to the ocean, so if you see two sets you would know that the turtle is done and already back into the ocean. But if you see one set of tracks this could mean two things. Either the turtle is still up there laying or that the turtle was smart enough to back track through their own tracks. When the turtle backtracks through their tracks it can make it very hard to identify the species. The symmetry of the tracks and the width can tell you what turtle made them. Once we would find tracks, we followed them up to the bed of the nest. Sometimes there would be a couple beds, most of which would be fake with one real one
one real one. We were then tasked to make a grid around each bed and preform a test to find the real nest. We were given a stick and would have to push into the sand at a 45-degree angle. Then once we felt a sudden give or the sand felt loose, we would start digging. Also, yes, there was a certain way you had you dig the holes too. At the exact point where your stick pushed in, you would start digging. First, we would kind of carve a small tunnel going straight down. The species of the turtle determines the depth of the egg chamber. On average we would find about 95 eggs per nest. Next, we would return to the hatchery and choose a plot, placing the eggs under the sand in the baskets.
Over the course of this trip I have learned many skills, most of which have changed my character for the better. One particular experience that really stood out for me was during our night patrols. As we were walking along, we came across a turtle in the middle of laying her eggs. Just seeing the digging and covering of the hole was fascinating. The way they pat down their nests are pretty cool too. When they pat down the sand, they make a really satisfying thump sound. Once done she make a little fake bed and scuttled back to the ocean. We started to dig the eggs up and our guide for the night let us each take turns taking out the eggs. This was when I could feel the difference I was making. Another moment is watching the baby turtle crawl towards the water. Watching them hit the water and disappear into the blue.
Because of this RSB trip I have changed some of my actions to better the environment. I have stopped using plastic water bottles and started filling my reusable bottle from the tap. On my hikes or just whenever I’m out and about, I would pick up trash that normally I would have just left behind. I have advocated to my friends and family to use reusable bottles and to recycle more. I plan to, when I go out, to pick up and dispose of trash I find. With that, volunteer more for road clean ups. In the future I will be looking into more of these trips to help out more.
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- Trevor Weis