Our team will conduct studies on the behavior, physiology and migration patterns of the leatherback turtles on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. We will help tag and identify turtles, record nest locations and help determine hatchling success. Researchers and scientists have been working with these turtles in for the past 17 years in attempt to understand the impact of human activities and pollution. This work has led to the establishment of a National Park and a Marine Biology field station.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Let's Talk Numbers!

Playa Grande Turtle News 2007-2008
(as of 1/3o/08)

Total Nests on Beach: 428
Total Turtles Visiting Beach: 75
Total New Turtles: 27
Hatchery Hatchlings Released: 853
Estimated Hatchling Success on Beach: 68.5%

What do these numbers tell us?
Of all the turtles that nested on the beach this year it was the first time nesting for 27 of them. They came ashore with no tags and the researchers tagged them this season. The rest already had a pit tag and had visited the beach during a previous nesting season 2-4 years back.
As for the hatchling success for the nests located on the beach, about 2 out of every 3 eggs that were laid hatched, and hopefully these hatchlings made it safely to sea.

Pregunta: About how old do you think some of the 27 "first timers" were? How can you figure that out?

posted by Jennifer Seshadri @ 12:02 PM

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