An Amazing Day on the Boat

After a few days of sleep and a full day in the hot springs, the research team was again ready to dive into work.

We organized some days on the boat to see if we could find our radio tagged females that didn’t come to nest during the arribada. The conditions were perfect, Beaufort sea state of 0-1, and a visibility of about 20-30 meters. Being in the water felt like flying in a crystal dome. Absolutely amazing!

But not enough. The first day was decent, but the second day started with a group of pantropical spotted dolphins (Stenella attenuata) swimming alongside our boat for about half an hour, bow riding and playing around the boat, while we were searching for our turtles.

All of a sudden we saw a huge splash and a massive body leaving the water. A humpback whale was breaching again and again a few hundred meters away. We found several couples mating in the infinite blue of the ocean.

We eventually caught sight of two of our radio tagged turtles. We had heard them for a while already over the receiver. We managed to recapture one of them (Yamileth). What a joy!

While we had Yami on the boat, we spotted another turtle that acted somewhat strange and looking closer we saw that she was dragging a huge bulk of discarded fishing line behind her (“ghost net”), and the part around her neck had already started to cut into the flesh. We managed to capture her and bring her onboard. There we cut the fishing line and disinfected the wounds as best as we could and released her since she seemed otherwise strong and healthy. Rehab centers and/or veterinary care, especially one specialized in sea turtles, is scarce to non-existent in Costa Rica, and experience has taught us to either leave turtles with hooks and fishing-line as they are and seal their death sentence or to give them a chance by removing obstructing objects hoping that their resilience will give them a second chance.