Sea Turtle Tagging Project At Cocos Island, Costa Rica

A Costa Rica scientific satellite and fin tagging project recently got underway at Cocos Island studying its green sea turtle and hawksbill visitors.

Marine researchers traveled Costa Rica open waters for about 30 hours in their search for migration habits about these ancient marine animals.

They are engaged in a kind of scientific working Costa Rica vacation that they hope will contribute to preserving these incredible reptilian mariners now endangered in much of their range.

Cocos Island was described by the famous seaman, Jacque Cousteau, as the most beautiful island he had ever encountered. The small island, only about nine square miles in size, lies some 340 miles off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, about halfway to the Galapagos Islands.

It is unlikely that it was the tropical beaches and island sunsets that captured the imagination of Captain Cousteau. Its beauty is found nearby, just off its shores, under water. Costa Ricans have voted it as one of the Seven Wonders of Costa Rica because in these waters one finds incomparable treasure: huge schools and varieties of fish, porpoises, whales and turtles.

Sea turtles have swum the world's oceans since the age of dinosaurs. Imagine the mighty Tyrannosaurus preying on them 200 million years ago when they came ashore to lay their eggs on the beaches.

These creatures swim all the oceans of the world except the frozen Antarctic and Arctic.

Once, the sheer numbers of green sea turtle, hawksbill, leatherback and other species were so seemingly limitless that lost sailors sometimes found land by listening for sea turtles paddling towards nesting grounds.

Once, not so long ago the sheer numbers of sea turtles were still so great that seamen lost in the fog sometimes found their way by listening for the sounds of sea turtles paddling towards ancient nesting grounds. For eons, sea turtles provided food for every kind of creature. Over eons, billions and billions were eaten by and trillions and trillions of eggs fed birds and animals, including man, for innumerable generations, yet the species' flourished. However, in just a few short, recent generations, man's unrestrained development along every coast and wanton plundering of these animals and their eggs have put them at risk. Whole populations were killed off in South America to make stylish Italian combs, and expensive shoes.

Jacque Yves Cousteau predicted that: "If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect."

But, world conservation organizations are working to turn around the decline turtle populations. Conservation groups and scientists have begun tagging pelagic turtles like the green sea turtle in remote places like Cocos Island. Some animals are fitted with flipper tags while others bear satellite transmitters in an effort to monitor their travel patterns and we now know that some species travel thousands and thousands of miles of oceans, from tropical waters to the deep waters off Canada.

We cannot undo the past but the men and women who tag sea turtles have confidence that the future is not yet written.