Bay of Turtles - Bahia de Jiquilisco, El Salvador
To arrive to fresh place in the dark is like tasting completely new food with a blindfold on. You can check out the edges, but a color appreciation isn't possible until daylight arrives. Night amount of the small town of los angeles Pirraya on an island in Jiquilisco Bay is quiet; the fishermen along with their families gather in small compounds preparing the days catch and saving energy for an early rise the next day. But hiding outside the lights of the town will be the beginning of a conservation movement that could save one of the world's most endangered populations of ocean wildlife.
My arrival to Jiquilisco Bay in southern El Salvador started at little port town of Puerto Parada. We waited for your boat to arrive on a small concrete dock at the end of the main road into town. There was little indication that i was on the edge belonging to the largest wetland in spain other than the mangrove trees across the channel. The dark boat ride was punctuated by distant lightning that was more entertainment than threat. Once our group, an international team of sea turtle conservationists, was settled into our rustic cabins, our night began. We received word of hatchlings at any local hatchery and set off on a short boat ride up the beach.
The few dozen hatchlings in the blue bucket at the hatchery were the first newborn hawksbill turtles I'd ever analyzed. With a red flashlight preserve their eyes, we inspected this healthy group who were eager to get to your water. No sooner had we released them by the beach than we received a call of a nesting female hawksbill on the nearby island. We hopped back into the boat for another short ride across the calm h2o.
Hawksbills are well famous for their preference for nesting much further up the beach, normally venturing in the beachside vegetation to lay their eggs. That knowledge didn't prepare me for your location of this turtle, probably more than 50 feet inland on the other side of a barbed wire fence that was tall enough to keep people out but let turtles through underneath. That turtle was the perfect illustration of why this population remained hidden for so long; many turtle experts had considered the hawksbills of the Eastern Pacific functionally extinct until just a few back.
That turtle decided never to nest so a few of us broke from the group to visit another hatchery where we waited for sunrise to examine three hawksbills that were being held to put satellite transmitters on the next day. Down the way, we stopped the boat discover another hawksbill that was on another isolated stretch of seaside. Finally, we arrive at the hatchery with one or so left in the evening. I stole on to find a hammock and was asleep before We can even lose my new sandals.
I want to accurately describe my first impressions of Jiquilisco Bay in the daylight but after lengthy night, Having been so disoriented my vision was pretty blurred. Stumbling out with the hammock, I walked over to a four-foot deep hole where three large hawksbills were calmly waiting always be released. These turtles were much larger (their shells measured about 3 feet long) when compared to one small hawksbill I had worked expertise before in Costa Rica; if I really could know better I would have thought they were a different species. In addition, had been more hatchlings to release.
Our visit to Jiquilisco was organized by ICAPO (The Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative) and these turtles are part a good ongoing study looking to unlock the mysterious life cycles of such turtles. There are estimated for you to become fewer than 500 nesting females hawksbills left in their range, which fits from southern Baja California, Mexico to Peru. Until recently, researchers assumed that hawksbills only lived beside coral reefs, of which there are relatively few along the Pacific coast of south america. However, research by ICAPO and their partners demonstrated that these turtles live primarily in mangroves, a reality that surprised many turtle experts.
Jiquilisco Bay is estimated to harbor nearly half of their nests and the very last thing the rest are seen in Padre Ramos Estuary, a little way south in northern Nicaragua during Nature Tours. Through the hard work of several organizations working in these two hotspots, calls for a growing group of people working in order to find ensure these turtles are around for an extensive time. ICAPO and its partners coordinate a local team of 75 residents, known as 'careyeros' (Carey is Spanish for hawksbill) who patrol key beaches around the bay, looking for nesting turtles and relocating their eggs to hatcheries.
Once I finished photographing these turtles and headed out on the beach, write-offs beauty for this area struck me full impulse. Across the water, a connected with perfectly shaped volcanoes rose up during the bay. Whilst the baby turtles slid in the water, a person's residents of Jiquilisco were just how to get started. Fishing boats crossed the water, heading to preferred spots in the brightening night out.
As we arrived for you to La Pirraya, the town was in full swing, getting yourself ready for their annual hawksbill festival, complete with parade, dignitaries, throngs of media, and more often. The parade got on a loud start with the Navy's marching band and the parade in excess of than many local school students. The students held homemade signs about protecting turtles and keeping trash out belonging to the ocean even a few wore turtle costumes despite the quickly rising temperature.
While I got pleasantly astonished at the large turnout to your festival, the sheer connected with media outlets in attendance was outrageous. Roughly 30 people from seemingly every media outlet inside of the country was there including TV news, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and more. Many citizens of El Salvador are like to show off its role in protecting hawksbills and also the mix of cutting-edge technology, international turtle experts, and delightful children would be a potent combination that media outlets didn't ignore.
Many of this Volunteer Vacations students stood outside a canopy, missing the shoulders of they to catch a peek at the turtles being prepared for attaching the transmitters. It took a lot more an hour to clean and sand to the shells, place several layers of epoxy around the transmitter, and permit them to dry. Once completed, the turtles were taken to the water and released. The crowds were kept in order to give the turtles room and once they had their bearings, they went straight away to the cool water.
I wish this story could have a neat and tidy ending with the turtles heading off into the water, their transmitters providing valuable information for quite a while. However, less than the week later I got word any particular of the hawksbills is already found deceased. The likely culprit was blast fishing, a barbaric practice where fishermen use homemade bombs to kill everything their particular range of impact. Discover more about this tragedy on our partner EcoViva's website here.
That news was a reminder that, despite a tremendous amount of progress studying and protecting Jiquilisco Bay's turtles over previous few years, there holds an involving work to do. The first order of company is to guaranteeing that the bay receives protection; effective regulations are currently lacking in this spectacular wildlife hotspot. ICAPO is seeking to guarantee protection of the critical hawksbill habitat, namely the 50 meter fridges along complications nesting beaches as well as all of the marine habitat within the estuary. These actions with government of El Salvador are the minimum necessary in order to hawksbills topic . shot at survival ultimately eastern Off-shore.