Travel Review: Sea Turtles of the Pacific Coast

Pacific Coast Welcomes Sea Turtles

In late summer and early fall, Mexico’s Pacific Coast welcomes the return of female sea turtles to the shores of their birth. By moonlight, they dig nests deep in the sand and lay golf ball sized eggs that will hatch 45 days later into hundreds of tiny offspring. This spectacular natural phenomenon peaks along the beaches of Manzanillo, the Costalegre and south in neighboring Michoacan from August to October. Along the southern Baja California peninsula, the season begins earlier, from June to roughly September and keeps turtle camps along the Corridor and Todos Santos busy.

Females can return to lay three nests a season in the span of two or three weeks when they sense sand conditions are ideal. After they drag themselves onto the beach, they begin to dig nests 45 centimeters in the sand and lay up to 100 round, white eggs. Using their back flippers they cover the nest and pat it down, leaving their tiny babies to fend for themselves when they emerge 45 days later. At Chupadero Turtle Camp, the largest government-aided camp an hour and a half south of Manzanillo in Colima State on the road toward Ahijadero, Armando Hernandez, a local biologist, has dedicated himself to the research and preservation of marine turtles for 16 years.

Hernandez and his crew of eight workers patrol a 28-kilometer stretch of beach on ATVs, relocating as many as 30 nests a night to the camp where eggs are guarded in manmade nests until they hatch. Volunteers release newborns to the sea – sometimes as many as 4,000 – in the evening when they have the best chance of evading predators. In one season, they often save 2,000 nests each carrying 100 eggs. Sea turtles’ natural predators include crabs, gulls, big fish, and sharks that feed on newborn turtles as they make their perilous journeys to feeding grounds. Only one or two out of 100 will survive to adulthood.

Newborn turtles take two to three days after they hatch to climb up the walls of their nest and break through the surface, moving in a great mass led by one strong leader. Once they hit the sand, a chemical process called “imprinting” takes over, helping them memorize the sand conditions so that when they reach sexual maturity 15 years later, they can return. In the ocean, they rely upon a week’s worth of reserve nutrients and swim for the safety of their nutrient-rich feeding zones where they spend a mysterious “lost year” off the radar screens of biologists.

But human predators are the most threatening to the survival of the most common turtle species along the Mexican Pacific, the olive ridley (tortuga golfina), leatherback (tortuga laúd) and black shell. Long before it was considered a federal crime, locals in fishing villages have eaten turtle meat and eggs. Today the demand for the meat, which peaks during the Easter holidays when eating red meat is prohibited, and turtle eggs – thought to be aphrodisiacs – means there is a constant supply of eggs entering the black market at elevated prices, sometimes as high as 4 pesos an egg. With the latest modifications to the Mexican Federal Penal Code, penalities for people charged with trafficking turtle products are between one year to nine years in prison and fines between 300 and 300,000 pesos.

For more information on the quest to save the sea turtles of Mexico and for details on ecological tours, Click Here.

This article was written by Renee Huang of MexicanPacific.com a travel website awarded the Lente de Plata prize by the Mexico Tourism Board for the best promotional tourism website in 2004.

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