The Critically Endangered Leatherback Sea Turtle: A Marvel Of Nature

Though most people have never heard of it the leatherback sea turtle could be the most amazing animal on the planet. Today there are only six remaining species of marine turtle, and uncounted eons in the past its ancestors had four legs and lived on land. About 110,000,000 ago, its legs and feet developed into massive flippers and it began to populate the Seven Seas, or, more accurately, the sea, because the Seven Seas did not exist that long ago.

The world was a very different place way back then. The Himalayas of Tibet did not exist that long ago. Indeed, the Himalayas were still 65,000,000 years away from even existing. Australia was connected to Antarctica when the earliest leatherbacks took to the sea and would not uncouple from it for about thirty million more generations of these sea animals. South America was not far from West Antarctica. Another 80,000,000 years would pass before Antarctica would turn into the frigid continent we see. The South Atlantic Ocean was still forming. Indeed, not only were there no Seven Seas way back then, there were not seven continents, either.

When the forebears of today's leatherbacks evolved into sea dwellers, there were no birds in the sky, no lions, tigers, or buffaloes because there were no mammals at all on the globet. The mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex would not walk the planet for about four hundred thousand centuries more. Yes, that is right: 400,000 centuries.

And whales or porpoises? Sea turtles were swimming the world's oceans for more than fifty million years before those mighty creatures---which are closely related to hippopotamus---evolved, left the land, and first entered the oceans, too.

Leatherbacks are really, really huge marine turtles weighing as much as two thousand pounds. This is not an exaggeration because one, captured in Wales tipped the scales at 1,980 pounds. And, despite its size, this great creature survived the extraordinary and terrible worldwide catastrophic extinction that killed nearly all the animals on earth. For that single reason it might be considered the most amazing animal on the globe. But, there is more.

One of the greatest feats in athletics was Michael Phelps' 200 meter freestyle world swimming record. But, had he swum that race against a leatherback, the turtle would have left him in its wake because it would have swum 1,000 meters in the same time Phelps swam just 200. This sea turtle swims so rapidly that it has made the 1992 Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest reptile on earth!

Leatherbacks may also be the world's greatest long-distance migrating creatures. Scientists tracked one of these giants 13,000 miles---and that was only one way.

Are you still unconvinced that, despite the accomplishments described above, it is the most amazing animal? The best part is still to come. This extraordinary creature routinely does something that Man has never been able accomplish. It can dive from the surface of the ocean down 4,000 feet where pressure approaches two thousand pounds per square inch. How much pressure is that? Well, imagine that you are the captain of today's strongest, best built, most modern, sophisticated, nuclear attack submarine and you dove right alongside the leatherback. At a depth of about twenty five hundred feet, you would have to stop because even with the best technology and strongest metal and composite materials known to engineers you'd be crushed like a tin can if you went deeper. And the turtle? It would be munching on jellyfish 1,600 feet below.

There is also the incredible fact that are found in all tropical and subtropical waters on earth and have been seen as far north as the Arctic Circle, in Alaska, not far from Quebec, and even Norway, and as far south as the Cape of Good Hope and below New Zealand, in waters as cold as 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet, even though they are, like all reptiles, cold blooded, they remain toasty warm because they can maintain a body temperature as much as 32 degrees higher than the water in which they are swimming.

Unfortunately, in only about twenty five years, one arrogant species has brought this magnificent animal to the tipping point of its very existence. It is now so rare that it is classified as critically endangered. By 2005, the Mexican population of leatherbacks had been reduced to just one percent of what it had been just 25 years earlier, a conservation catastrophe by any measure. On beaches in Malaysia that once had the world's largest leatherback nesting population, about 10,000 nests, 2008 produced only two nests. Somewhere, the Angels weep at Man's stupidity, greed, and over exploitation and destruction.

Today, there are hundreds of conservation organizations, and more than 100 countries, that are fighting to stem the decline of this magnificent race but it remains to be seen if this most ancient of all creatures can survive your generation and mine.

Tiny Costa Rica is trying to do its part in conserving this irreplaceable species and has set aside reserves on both the Pacific and Caribbean coasts. Tortuguero is the world's biggest and most important green sea turtle nesting preserve and Ostional Refuge has the planet's largest arribadas---mass nestings of hundreds of thousands of olive ridley turtles. Costa Rica ecotourism is playing an important role in preserving sea turtles. And, if you take a Costa Rica vacation, be sure to look for the rare but awesome leatherback.