Shipwreck Party!

Shipwreck Party! We had a shipwreck party up at the Botanical Gardens on Saturday. It was a lot of fun- we had a barbecue first and then invited people to come up later. The idea was that you were shipwrecked without any clothes, so a lot of people made costumes out of calabash shells and leaves, etc. The interns decided to crash the party and dress as the pirates that shipwrecked the ship! Unfortunately the party was kind of slow and it mostly ended up being STENAPA people because a lot of people's cars can't make it up the road to the Botanical Gardens.

Turtles: (again)
Two times this past week we got the call for turtle hatchlings. Arturo (the turtle guy) called the Botan phone and told us there were hatchlings on Monday night. A volunteer came into the pavillion and shouted: "Turtle!" which made me wake up right away and jump straight out of my hammock. Whenever there is a turtle, you are allowed to drive at "turtle speed" which basically means as fast as you can go down the Botan road. So here we were all excited because this particular nest was long overdue to hatch. We got down to Zeelandia beach (approximately 8 minutes later) and saw 5 baby turtle hatchlings. It was awesome! They always head toward the brightest part on the beach, which are usually the waves. If there are lights behind the beach (which they are at Zeelandia) the turtles will usually head away from the ocean. You can lead them with your flashlight down to the beach if they're having trouble.
The following night we were also called about the turtle hatchlings, but thankfully it was a bit earlier and we were all awake. We went down to the beach but unfortunately, there was only one baby turtle. The turtle survival rate to adulthood is 1/1000, so realistically none of the 5 turtles that hatched will probably survive. Thankfully, there was another unmarked nest that they found today that had 121 hatchlings that came out all at once. They usually come out all at once because there is safety in numbers. Thankfully after that turtle patrol was canceled. It's actually really boring to walk along the beach at night from 9PM-3AM. There have only been about 4 nesting turtles this season so there hasn't been too much action. Hopefully the conservation program that they're doing with the turtles (making sure they're nests won't get washed away once laid, tagging, and tracking the mature female turtles) will help and will eventually increase the numbers. The locals have harvested the turtles for a very long time so the numbers are painfully low. The first night I arrived we tagged a turtle and you can check out it's path at www.seaturtle.org The turtle's name is Track- named by a school-child that won a contest!