After two long days of travel and getting settled into our home for the next week, we had our first real day of sea turtle work in Costa Rica today.
We started off the morning early with breakfast at the hotel where we discussed the day’s agenda. Shortly after, we left to meet Edgar, the founder of Hogar Tierra, in a forest near Coyote. He taught us about how the smallest of actions can have a large impact on the environment, and that nature is everyone’s home. Edgar taught us how to call howler monkeys, and later we practiced calling them at the hotel. Afterwards, we met with the Turtle Trax team where we received a lecture about the turtles we will be working with throughout the trip. The presentation served as an orientation for the activities we are going to do on our trip. In this talk, we learned that there are only less than 400 leatherbacks in the Pacific Ocean, and that turtles hatch in cooler temperatures and that is why 95% of them hatch at night. Then we swam in the hotel pool and bonded as a group. To finish the day, we reflected on each other’s needs and ate dinner at the Turtle Trax research station.
