Oasis in a Sea of Humanity: Sea Turtles of The Yucatan

“We may have to walk a bit to see a turtle,” I told my 11-year-old daughter Karina as the huge supermoon rose over the Caribbean. My family was standing on X’cacel beach, one of Mexico’s most important nesting beaches for green turtles, located in a national park near Playa del Carmen on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

As it turned out, we only had to walk about 20 feet before a dark round shape appeared in the surf.  The turtle emerged right in front the research station run by local organization Flora, Fauna y Cultura de Mexico. To give the green turtle space to find a good spot to lay its eggs, we retreated back up the walkway, only to have the turtle follow us up the path. It eventually changed its mind, however, and made its way back to the water.

It wasn’t long before several other turtles came up on the beach. We waited until the closest turtle was laying its eggs before approaching to avoid disturbing it at a sensitive point in the process. This was also a green turtle, a female weighing probably over 200 pounds. Its multicolored shell appeared faintly white in the moonlight. Though I’ve worked with sea turtles for more than a decade, this was the first time Karina had seen one laying eggs, and she was entranced by the spectacle of the ancient ritual.

X’cacel is located on a nondescript road; no signs promote this incredible place, which in tourist-friendly Mexico may be a good thing. Turtles nest all along the stretch of beach from Cancun to Tulum known as the Riviera Maya, but this is one of the only spots where the beach is free of large resorts and hotels. Lights, beach furniture, and crowds all reduce the number of turtles that come up to nest, so undeveloped stretches like this are critical to keeping these ancient reptiles around.

Flora, Fauna y Cultura has spent the past 30 years protecting three turtle species that nest on more than 10 beaches in the region. These turtles face an array of threats including human consumption of their eggs and meat, and here – perhaps more than anywhere else in the world – coastal tourism development. Despite being a national park, known as Santuario de la Tortuga Marina Xcacel-Xcacelito, Xcacel still faces a threat of having its natural coastal area developed into big resorts.

The next morning, we headed over to Akumal (Mayan for “Place of the Turtles”), which has a bay well known for the green turtles who feed on the seagrass. We got there early to beat the crowds and put on our snorkels and headed out in search of the ancient reptiles. Before long, my wife found a turtle calmly grazing on the grass and we quietly watched it at a distance. Its beautifully patterned orange, brown, and gold shell was much more clear than the one we’d seen the night before on the beach.

We had the young green turtle to ourselves for about 15 minutes before other snorkelers moved in. The reptile moved slowly along the seagrass, occasionally rising gently to the surface to fill its lungs before sinking back to the bottom. Most of the observers gave the turtle enough space, though one overzealous snorkeler eventually drove the turtle away by getting too close and trying to follow it with a video camera. Exhilarated by the experience, my daughter said later that watching that turtle go about its business gave her hope for the future of this species.

By the time we were done, dozens more people were getting into the water. After we got out, we had a chance to chat with Paul Sanchez-Navarro, the tall scholarly director of CentroEcologico Akumal, an organization that works to protect turtles both in the water and while nesting in this area. He explained that the large numbers of people swimming in the bay have a real impact on the turtles that feed on the seagrass, causing them to eat less and increasing stress. The good news is that a new management plan should be in place soon to enforce how visitors and tour guides act while around the turtles.

That evening, we headed south to Tulum. Everything slowed down as we turned off the main highway and drove our rental car over the frequent speed bumps along the road towards Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve. At Hotel Nueva Vida de Ramiro, a local hotel that works to minimize its ecological footprint while creating an inviting setting, most of the grounds are planted with native trees.  The small resort hosts rangers from Flora, Fauna y Cultura and a hatchery to protect the eggs laid by turtles that come up this stretch of beach.

After settling into the hotel, I met up with Lluvia Soto, the young and friendly Country Director for SEEtheWILD partner Global Vision International (GVI). We hopped into her SUV, a requirement for traversing the rough road into Sian Ka’an, the only major protected area along the coast south of Cancun. GVI is partnering with Flora, Fauna y Cultura to monitor a formerly unprotected stretch of nesting beach (used by loggerhead and green turtles) inside the park.

After more than an hour of navigating the flat dirt road through coastal forest and mangrove, we emerged onto a thin peninsula of land, barely wider than the beach and the road, sandwiched between turquoise ocean and a dark blue lagoon. This beach would be one of the more beautiful I’ve ever seen if it weren’t for the stunning amount of trash, washed up here from around the world. Learn how trash affects sea turtles here.

Even in this oasis of nature, the turtles need to crawl through trash to find a place to lay their eggs, and the emerging hatchlings are smaller than the plastic bottles and flip flops. Part of GVI’s work in the area is to reduce this waste; their staff and volunteers do weekly clean-ups in the reserve, which can result in up to a ton of trash collected in a day. They have also set up a recycling center in the nearby town of Punta Allen, located within the refuge. Learn more about this sea turtle volunteer program.

That evening, back at Nueva Vida, the rangers knocked on our door to let us know that a turtle was nesting right in front of the hotel, one of the few to turn off its lights that face the water during nesting season and remove furniture from the beach at night. Such common-sense measures are a necessity when sharing a beach with sea turtles, but unfortunately, many resorts here do not make the effort.

This turtle, a green, headed towards the resort’s hatchery but changed its mind and returned to the water without nesting. Fortunately another green turtle emerged just a short walk down the beach, so we were able to see the whole nesting process, from digging the nest and laying the eggs to camouflaging the nest to hide it from predators. My wife, also a turtle conservationist, helped the ranger collect data on the turtle while I explained the fascinating process to a couple of tourists who happened upon the scene.

On the way back, we saw a fresh set of tracks that led to a lounge chair in front of a brightly lit resort. It was clear from the tracks that the turtle had turned around without nesting once it met the chair– further evidence that resorts like this one have replaced poaching on this beach as the biggest threat. Learn more about howcoastal development affects sea turtles.

Our tour of the area’s turtle beaches finished up with a meeting with our friends at Flora, Fauna y Cultura and a group of Mayan youth who patrol a beach in nearby Tulum National Park, near the town’s famous ruins. This beach, with its location near the town, is a hotspot for egg poaching. Our Billion Baby Turtles program and our partners at Lush Cosmetics (through its Charity Pot program) are helping to fund this program, which provides employment for these young men while helping to protect an important nesting beach for green turtles and hawksbills.

During our visit, we walked with the turtle protectors over to the beach. While my daughter buried her feet in the water, the young mean told us about their hard work. Each night, they spend the entire night on the beach, walking up and down the sand in search of emerging turtles. At dawn, they are picked up and return home to rest and recover. It’s this kind of dedication that is needed to keep the turtle returning to these beaches year after year.

A New Agricultural Revolution Takes Root in El Salvador

(Part 2 of a 3 part series exploring El Salvador)

The temperature went from warm to scalding as the morning clouds dissipated. Streams of sweat rolled down our arms and backs as we dug into the clay soil. Large quantities of sunscreen and water held off the sunstroke. It was the best morning of our vacation.

Two days into our July 2013 trip to explore El Salvador with EcoViva, a US-based development organization, our group of Portland OR residents and Evergreen University students took a short bus ride to a local farm for a volunteer work project. We had heard from EcoViva Fellow Aaron Voit that agriculture was a major area of focus of local organizations and here was our chance to get our hands dirty.

Victor (left) & Aaron (right)

Our host for the day was Victor Velasquez, a technician with Asociacion Mangle (EcoViva’s sister organization), who works with their sustainable agriculture program. He showed us how we would be adding a sweet-smelling type of compost called “Bokashi” to saplings of mango and nispero trees as a substitute for the chemical fertilizers commonly used in the area.

Working through the morning, our group managed to complete the process with dozens of saplings, saving the farmer days worth of work. There’s no better way to understand a person’s situation than by walking in their shoes and by the end of the morning, our respect for the farmers of El Salvador had reached epic proportions.

After lunch and a siesta, we continued our lesson in organic farming, Salvadoran-style, by processing a batch of the compost. Bokashi is a Japanese composting technique that uses fermentation to break down organic material. Mangle has developed their own recipe using discarded resources commonly available in this area such as sugar cane waste, rice husks, and cow manure.

Bokashi fertilizer

To jumpstart the microbes that break down these materials, a mixture of yeast and molasses is added and the piles turned. This compost is one small part of Mangle’s Diversified Production program. The compost, of which more than 50,000 pounds were distributed last year to farms around the region, helps to restore soil after years of overuse before the war when most of the land was cotton and sugarcane plantations.  

El Salvador in the past wholly embraced the concepts of the “green revolution”, importing huge quantities of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and converting thousands of acres to monocultures of cash crops like cotton and sugarcane. The benefits of these techniques helped to dramatically increase production for the few wealthy families who owned the farms, but the costs were borne by the farm workers and animals that were exposed to the toxic chemicals.

Even today, many of the so-called “dirty dozen” of the most toxic pesticides that are banned in many countries are still used in El Salvador including DDT. The impact of these chemicals can be seen in the extremely high rates of liver disease found in the region and groundwater that remains polluted after many years of use.

Before the green revolution, many Salvadorans survived by subsistence farming, growing many varieties of plants to feed their families. But since the end of the war in the 1990’s, many farmers here now grow just a few crops, primarily corn, which has affected nutrition. Mangle has made crop diversification a major focus of its work to help reduce the risk of crop failure due to pests or weather and improve diets. Their seed bank provides a variety of crops for local farmers, developed specifically for local soils and climate.

I spent one early morning while checking out Mangle’s organic demonstration farm that grows dozens of varieties of fruits and vegetables. The centerpiece of the farm was a water pump, powered by one of the largest solar arrays in rural El Salvador. While there, I met Juan Luna, the engaging and intelligent leader of the Diversified Production Program.

Juan told me about one of Mangle’s biggest successes, taking on agrochemical giant Monsanto whose corn seeds the government of El Salvador was handing out to farmers across the country. While touted as a program to help reduce hunger, the reality is that the use of these seeds locked farmers into purchasing expensive chemical inputs and new seeds every year, as the yield quickly dropped after first planting. Mangle, in partnership with other organizations, convinced the government to cancel the contract and now works with the government to produce and distribute native seeds grown by local farmers that produce high yields for years with little or no chemicals. 

Mangle and its partners do much more than just distribute seeds and compost. Their technical support program has helped to train hundreds of farmers in sustainable agriculture techniques, they provide loans to help farmers transition to organic, their organic demonstration farm grows dozens of varieties of food, and new markets help local producers earn more income. To help combat the liver disease, they convinced the government to build a brand new hospital in Ciudad Romero focused on this pervasive problem. Even local schools are getting involved; one school in Romero is growing a garden funded by the government as part of a pilot program to provide more healthy school lunches.

At the end of our week, our group got to sample one of the most delicious products of Asociacion Mangle’s work – cashews! The nuts are grown, processed, and roasted by a cooperative of 16 women and are some of the best I’ve ever tasted. Do the organic techniques improve the taste of the food? Who knows, but supporting grassroots efforts to improve El Salvador’s foodsystem definitely helps one enjoy its bounty.

Read the other parts of this series:

-Part 1: Rebuilding from the Ashes of El Salvador's Civil War

-Part 3: Protecting El Salvador's Largest Wetland From the Ground Up

Learn more about the El Salvador Sea Turtles & Community Development trip.

Gentle Giants - Meeting the Extraordinary Whale Shark

The Caribbean was calm as our boatload of snorkelers headed northwest from the bustling Mexican island of Isla Mujeres on a bright summer day. The bright turquoise water near the island turned dark blue as we made our way towards the Gulf of Mexico. A group of dolphins known locally as the “Rude Boys” made a brief appearance. To our left, the only view on the horizon was Isla Contoy, protected as a bird sanctuary.

After an hour or so, a small city seemed to appear on the horizon. As we approached, the city morphed into a group of boats collected together in a seemingly random spot. Once we got close, we saw the large dorsal fins that attract thousands of people to jump into these deep waters.

Our boat came to a stop on the edge of a swirling mass of giant sharks. My wife and daughter pulled on their snorkeling gear as I readied the camera. As they slipped into the water, an enormous creature slid by the boat. One thought ran through my head: Am I crazy to bring my family thousands of miles to come face to face with the largest shark in the world?

Whale sharks have been high on my list since a 2008 visit to Mexico’s Cabo Pulmo National Park resulted in a near miss. Since the launch of SEEtheWILD in 2011, this whale shark trip with our partner Reefs to Rockies have been the most popular animals (apart from sea turtles) that our conservation tourism project promotes and it was finally time for me to experience it myself.

I knew these animals were big. I’ve seen lots of photos, read many stories, and heard first-hand accounts of their gigantism. However, none of that prepared me for the actual sight of a whale shark. From the boat, their length is astonishing. But once you are in the water, you realize that the overhead view of these sharks is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

Our day started with a talk by our guide, Logan, who has lived most of her life on Isla Mujeres. Whale sharks are perhaps the leading attraction of this island, and local operators make sure that every gringo that arrives knows about the unique opportunity to see them. As Logan made clear, there is no threat from these sharks; they have no teeth and are not aggressive to humans.

With their popularity come issues, however, and Logan made it very clear that touching these animals is strictly off limits. The most entertaining part of her monologue was a pantomime of the typical first reaction of people seeing the sharks for the first time – a combination of shock, wonder, and a bit of fear.

Logan’s prediction of that initial shock was dead on. After donning my own snorkeling gear and getting my first underwater view, I quickly lifted my head, needing a second to comprehend what my eyes had just seen. The whale sharks’ easy grace in the water belies the fact that these animals can be up to 40 feet long and weigh up to 20 tons.

To maintain such a large size, they spend nearly all of their time feeding, moving along the surface with their gaping mouths collecting plankton and fish eggs. The sea near Isla Mujeres is one of a few different places around the world where whale sharks gather in large groups. Our group of 10 people rotated in and out of the boat with our two guides every few minutes, giving everyone several chances to see the sharks from the water.

For all their size, whale sharks are not immune to threats. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature considers them “vulnerable” to threats such as boat strikes (primarily from larger vessels than the boat we were on), which can hurt or kill these amazing animals. For years, they were caught in fisheries in Asia, and they can still be found in some fish markets around the region.

As these sharks become popular for tourism, new threats are popping up. In the Philippines, some operators are feeding whale sharks to attract them, running the risk of altering migration routes. At Isla Mujeres, when there are few sharks, self-imposed rules go out the window to ensure tourists get to see these animals up close. Mexican scientists are currently working to determine the maximum tourism capacity.

Whale sharks can be found around the world in tropical waters, including Honduras, Taiwan, the Seychelles, and other spots, but Isla Mujeres has become one of the most popular spots in the world. Whale shark tourism here has grown dramatically over the past few years. Their feeding aggregations can draw thousands people per year. There were roughly 30 boats there on the morning we went out and double that by the time we left. If each boat had just ten snorkelers, that would mean 300 – 600 people there at one time. There are reportedly more than 200 boats with permits and quite a few more that participate illegally.

Credit: iStockphoto

Leading up to this trip, my biggest concern was whether this crush of people would take away from the experience. Those fears were allayed one I was in the water. When there is a large aggregation, the water doesn’t feel crowded with people. Most of the boats enforce a rule that only allows two people per guide, so the majority of people are in the boats at any given time. And the large group was spread out enough that we did not see another group of people nearby during the couple of hours we spent there.

Whale shark tourism, when done right, can be a huge benefit to the sharks and other animals. Their monetary value creates an incentive to stop catching them for meat, and Reefs to Rockies designates five percent of the trip’s cost towards conservation efforts like those of Ecocean, an organization that helps to research these little-known fish. Snorkelers can also contribute to a database by uploading their images to the whale shark library, which helps researchers learn about population dynamics.

Towards the end of my visit, I recorded a video of two slow-moving sharks swimming to my left. Even with about 10 feet between us, my camera could only capture part of the sharks in the frame. As they slid by, I yelled with surprise into my snorkel as my view was suddenly impaired by a large spotted animal at a very close distance. It was another whale shark, swimming in the opposite direction came between me and the other sharks. Nearby, my wife and daughter laughed as I quickly backed out the way of the large caudal (rear) fin as it passed by.

 

Maybe my choice of summer family entertainment really was a little bit crazy, but we wouldn’t trade the memories of this experience for any amusement park or camping trip.

5 Wildlife Adventures for the Whole Family

Rising concern over the diminished role of nature in children’s lives has been the topic of serious discussion in the past couple of decades, and has led to publications such as Richard Louv’s best-seller Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder. According to several studies, most kids rarely play outside, and they also learn about wild animals in zoos or in school, rather than first-hand.

A shift in the educational system is not close to fruition, but in the meantime, your family can enjoy first-hand experiences with animals in their natural habitats on one of the Family Wildlife Adventures offered on SEEtheWILD.org. These family adventures are suitable for all ages, providing families a memorable travel experience with lasting impacts. From studying sea turtles to learning how a jaguar researcher sets a camera trap, your family will have an unforgettable adventure while supporting conservation programs.

The five trips listed are our most popular family adventures; you can browse more options on the SEEtheWILD website.

•       Costa Rica Ultimate Wildlife Adventure:

  

  (Reefs to Rockies)

  Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula has been called “one of the most biologically intense places on Earth” by National Geographic, and rightly so: it is one of the best protected locations in Central America. Explore this lush environment as you actively learn about jaguars, monkeys, birds and reefs. Your family will snorkel the coastline, learn how to set a camera trap, and hike stunning landscapes before retiring to comfortable accommodations each evening. Starting at $1,995 per person, this 8-day trip gives you more than your money’s worth.

•  Undiscovered Belize Adventure:

  

  (Wildland Adventures)

  This trip is listed as one of National Geographic Traveler's "Tour of a Lifetime" with good reason. You and your family will journey off the beaten path to experience Belize’s cultural and natural resources. You will enjoy the remarkable diversity of sea life as you snorkel some of the world’s most renowned dive sites, and find jungle wildlife as you paddle down a river. On land, you will explore Mayan ruins, experience local culture, and hike tropical forests. This 9-day tour starts at $3,850.

• Galapagos Adventure:

  

  (Natural Habitat Adventures)

  Explore one of the world’s most unique wildlife hot spots by private yacht. You will snorkel with sea lions, hike stunning landscapes, and get the chance to view the Galapagos’ famously unique species, including giant tortoises and a plethora of birds. Your family will also get the opportunity to visit the Charles Darwin Research Station, explore lava formations and camp among giant tortoises (optional). This 11-day trip starts at $5,695 per person.

•   Whale Sharks and Sea Turtles of the Yucatan:

  

  (iStockphoto)

  Enjoy the splendors of the Mexican Riviera’s coastline, culture and history. Your family will spend ample time snorkeling among gentle sea turtles and whale sharks, and viewing other marine species. On land, you will get the opportunity to explore the well-preserved Mayan ruins of Tulum, set upon cliffs overlooking the ocean, and to hike the wetlands and forest of the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve. This trip starts at $1,950 per person and lasts 7 days.

•  Great Bear Rainforest:

  

  (Kevin J. Smith/Maple Leaf Adventures)

  Explore the rugged wilderness of British Columbia by schooner, Zodiac, kayak, and on foot as you look for a variety of species. This lush temperate rainforest is home to grizzly bears, black bears, and the rare white Spirit bear, while the coastline and open ocean are frequented by humpback whales, orcas, and dolphins – the latter sometimes swims alongside the ship! Naturalist guides also teach you about local ecology, including the “salmon forest.” Starting at $2,630 per person, this voyage lasts 10 days.

Spanning multiple continents, species, and types of activities, these trips offer options for families of all ages, fitness levels, and interests. Where you go is up to you. What is important is that you choose to impart a love of the natural world, and the skills to explore it, to your children. Wherever you go, this is an important lesson to convey.