Our first work of these days has been to build
the leatherback and black turtle hatchery. Here is the experience of building
the hatchery from Wade:
“…Building a turtle hatchery involves the
excavation of sand to a certain depth, approximately one meter and as large as
you want to go to have a grid of 75 x 75 cm plots. This hatchery was dug to
have 10 x 6 plots, so approximately 10 x 6 x 1 m. This work included sifting sand
low tide sand and wheel barrowing it or hauling it to the hatchery in burlap
sacks. Needless to say for a Canadian coming from cold wet fall weather to
Costa Rican hot, humid days this was tiring work that wore a guy out and trying
to keep up to the guys already here was tough as they all worked exceptionally
hard.
This work continued for days with new
volunteers joining and helping out, with sessions usually from 5 am to around
8.30 am and from 3pm to around 5pm; grueling and hard sessions were, however,
they were good grounds for meeting people, learning about your newfound friends
and co-workers….”
Not only building the hatchery we have
started with the fun turtle patrolling; two shifts, one from 7pm until 12
midnight and the other from midnight to 5 am, walking through the 7 km beach trying
to see the first nesting females of the season. But before this, research
assistants and volunteers made some training sessions on the beach building a
sand turtle, and they receiving an information session given by power point
prior to heading out.
All this work, hatchery and patrolling,
continued for a week until the hatchery was done and everyone, who had been out
in the heat with bits of sleep here and there for a week, was very excited
about this. We celebrated by sleeping!
The weather has been beautiful, we have met
all sort of people, the community as always very friendly, we were able to
watch our first “arribada” and our international staff ( Wade) is settled into
the Pura Vida lifestyle!
Thank you to Andrey, Wade, Yohan, Elmer,
Reiner, Cornwell group, UNA group and independent volunteers that have helped
us to have this nice beginning!
We will be keeping you updated in the
following month about news happening at the project!!
Pura Vida!
