Turtle Conservation in Ostional, Costa Rica

For this Turtle Conservation Project we traveled to Ostional on the Nicoya Penisula of Costa Rica. Ostional is one of the few places in the world where the Olive Ridley Sea turtles come en masse to lay their eggs. There can be hundreds of thousands of them over a 5 day period. Although one of these "arribadas" did not occur during the three weeks that I was there, we still had the opportunity to work on research projects with single turtles as they came ashore to lay their eggs. We also got a chance to collect data one of the endangered Green Turtles and one of the Leatherbacks which are also endangered. We also engaged in beach cleaning projects and in replacing some of the markers on the beach used to determine where the egg laying activity takes place.

The group of volunteers I was with came from several countries and ranged in age from in their teens to over 70 years old. It was great meeting all the new people, learning about their countries and experiences and just having fun working and playing togther. What a better place to enjoy downtime than at the lovely Costa Rican coast!!