Bringing Light to the Darkness: The Conservation Legacy of Jairo Mora Sandoval

On Friday, May 31^st, while returning from a long night walking a turtle nesting beach near the city of Limón, young Costa Rican conservationist Jairo Mora Sandoval was abducted by unknown assailants, beaten and murdered. The beach where Mora Sandoval worked is a hot spot for nesting by the critically endangered leatherback, but also well-known for poaching and as a transfer point for drugs entering Costa Rica. This beach has now become a flash point for the direction that Costa Rica will go as a country.

The brave young man had recently spoken out to the media and on social media about the lack of government support for the conservationists on this beach. With a Ministry of Environment tolerant of the illegal trade in sea turtle eggs, and without effective enforcement over a flourishing black market, efforts by local Police and Coast Guard have routinely fallen short of what is needed to safeguard people working tirelessly to protect the nation’s natural treasures. It was in this context that a small group of conservationists were left on their own against the poachers and drug runners. They had received threats, but never thought their work to protect endangered turtles would result in a tragedy like this.

I spent two years of my life walking Costa Rica’s turtle beaches. I know what it’s like to be in the dark, with little to defend yourself. I worked for the same organization that Jairo worked for, learning from Didiher Chacón, Country Coordinator and Director of Latin American Programs for the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network (WIDECAST) and one of the country’s leading conservationists. I never felt threatened on those beaches, but that experience was challenging enough, dealing with rain, insects, and more to make sure the nests were protected.

Costa Rica is known around the world as the place where ecotourism was born. The country has beautiful beaches, lush tropical forests, and the most species of wildlife per kilometer in the world according to some. Sea turtles are a main attraction, nesting on dozens of beaches on both coasts and attracting thousands of people each year to see them nesting. Hundreds of people come to volunteer annually on these beaches without incident, spending their time, money, and sweat with the goal of contributing to the conservation of these incredible animals.

The volunteers and travelers that come to these beaches are critical, now more than ever, to the success of efforts to protect sea turtles in Costa Rica and around the world. The heavy lifting of turtle conservation work in Costa Rica is not done by the government. Instead, dozens of non-profit organizations toil long hours, for very little income, to make sure the eggs, meat, and shells are not collected for sale on the black market. Rarely do the police, Coast Guard, or rangers from the Ministry of the Environment walk the beaches or enforce the laws. Poachers are caught red-handed and go without prosecution. Fortunately, most of the country’s nesting beaches do not have the danger of Moin Beach and conservationists and volunteers can safely walk the beach without worry of danger.

When the government of Costa Rica spends millions of dollars to market itself as a wildlife paradise but next to nothing to protect that wildlife, will the volunteers and tourists still come? President Chinchilla must show the world that they will not stand silent when the people most dedicated to protecting the country’s natural resources are cut down for speaking out. Jairo’s family – and his many friends and colleagues – will never be the same, but some good can come from this. The government can name Moin Beach a National Park in his honor, securing this beach for both the turtles and the conservationists and taking away an entry point for drugs.

Each of us who shares Jairo’s passion for biodiversity conservation work can help to ensure that the world never forgets his contribution to Costa Rica’s sea turtles.  

Are Costa Rica’s Beaches Safe?

The awful news about the murder of Costa Rican sea turtle conservationist Jairo Mora Sandoval has shocked the world. Jairo was a brave young conservationist working hard to protect an important leatherback turtle nesting beach called Moin Beach, near the port city of Limon on the Caribbean coast. The beach was well-known both as a place for poachers to collect turtle eggs and a key location for drugs to enter Costa Rica. Along with Jairo, four volunteers from the US and Spain were locked into an abandoned house and robbed (they later escaped unharmed).

Many people come to Costa Rica’s beaches each year to see sea turtles nesting or to volunteer with conservation programs. These visitors and volunteers are critical to the success of local organizations, providing both manpower and funding to continue their work. We connect more than 100 people each year to turtle projects with no incidents. With this recent news, many people now want to know whether its safe to go to Costa Rica.

Most of the country’s beaches do not face the danger that exists at Moin Beach. The majority of turtle nesting beaches in the country are remote with few people living nearby and are not used for transporting drugs. While poaching exists across the country due to a lack of enforcement by government authorities, in most places the people that collect the eggs do so away from researchers and conservationists that patrol the beaches. Its rare for a poacher to confront a conservationist and most turtle projects have safety measures in place to make sure that the beaches are safe and only Costa Ricans interact with local residents on the beach at night.

Costa Rica’s sea turtles need the help of volunteers and tourists now more than ever. Its always a good idea to check with the organizations that run the conservation programs to see what safety measures they have in place and what the current situation is as well as with the State Department. We are confident that the beaches where we send people are safe and would not put anyone in danger by organizing a trip or recommending a place that might not be safe.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions.

5 Things You Can Do To Protect The Ocean

World Ocean Day is coming up on June 8^th and what better way to celebrate than by helping to protect the ocean and the creatures that call it home? Most of the news we hear these days about the ocean is bad; giant islands of trash, sharks being killed for their fins, and more. But there is still hope to save the oceans and everyone can help no matter how far you live from a coast.

1. Use Less Plastic

Many people have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch out north of Hawaii; not many people know that all five of the world’s oceans have currents (called “gyres”) that collect plastic waste. This waste endangers sea turtles, birds, seals, and other wildlife.

How to help: First, avoid plastic wherever possible. You can support local bans on plastic bags and take the Plastic Pollution Coalition’s Pledge to refuse disposable plastic. You can also volunteer in the International Coastal Cleanup and help keep trash out of the oceans.

2. Eat Less Fish or More Sustainable Fish

Many of the world’s major fish stocks are overfished and collapsing. This is more than a food issue; these fish make the marine food web survive and many coastal communities depend on the industry. The good news is that there are alternatives for those who don’t want to completely give up seafood.

How to help: First, avoid the most damaging seafood such as shrimp. In some places, fishermen catch up to 10 lbs. of other fish and animals for every pound of shrimp. Also, print out a Seafood Watch Guide or download their smart phone app that tells you which fish are being caught sustainably and which ones can have high levels of toxins.

3. Use Your Voice (or Your Email)

There are many opportunities to speak up for ocean conservation. For example, you can participate in the Sea Turtle Restoration Project’s campaign to enforce the use of turtle excluder devices on shrimp boats in Louisiana by emailing your Senator.

4. Volunteer With A Sea Turtle Conservation Project

Ever wanted to see what the life of a marine biologist is like? Our SEE Turtles project helps connect volunteers with sea turtle conservation programs in Latin America at no charge. Patrol a turtle nesting beach, helping to measure and tag sea turtles and move their eggs to a protected hatchery. Volunteers pay from $15-50/day for food and lodging, which is a critical source of income for many small projects.

5. Take An Ocean Wildlife Conservation Tour

SEEtheWILD is the world’s first non-profit wildlife conservation travel project and our website promotes tours where you can get up close to ocean wildlife including sea turtles, sharks, and whales. Every trip benefits conservation programs through donations, education, and volunteer opportunities.

Bonus Action: Share A Blue Marble

The Blue Marbles Project is a simple experiment in showing gratitude for the ocean. Millions of these marbles are passing around the planet, from hand to hand. The premise is simple, give a marble to someone doing good things for the ocean. Pick up some marbles here and share the stories of the people you give them to on Facebook.

Protecting Mozambique’s Gentle Giants

By Daniel van Duinkerken, Marine Megafauna Foundation

In 2012, the Marine Megafauna Foundation won a grant of $3,000 in a SEEtheWILD contest. With 1,236 votes for MMF on Facebook, we were overwhelmed by the amazing support for our conservation efforts in Mozambique.  But what were these funds exactly used for?       

The grant went towards the project of one of MMF’s PhD-students, Daniel van Duinkerken. His project, entitled ‘Habitat use and movement patterns of the reef manta ray, Manta alfredi”, aims to gather information on movements and habitat use of manta rays along this very productive coastline. However, the reef manta ray population here has been very hard hit. With an 88% decline in manta ray sightings over an eight-year study period, more information on these enigmatic fish is needed. By using intricate tagging technologies to find out where these mantas go, we hope to be able to better protect them.

So how does this tagging work? We implement a type of tagging called ‘acoustic telemetry’. This sounds complicated, but the principle is in fact quite simple. ‘Acoustic transmitters’, which are the tags, and ‘acoustic receivers’, similar to an underwater microphone, are used together to monitor movement. Whenever a tag is within 300 to 500 meters of a receiver, it gets logged onto it. By tagging manta rays with acoustic transmitters and downloading the data from the receivers every couple of months, we will be able to see where the gentle giants hang out.

We have deployed 12 acoustic receivers at known manta aggregations sites, such as cleaning stations on reefs, or feeding sites.  This entire array, which stretches about 330 along the southern Mozambican coastline, has just been completed, and in the next six months, we aim to put 30 acoustic tags on manta rays.

So what type of information will this give us? It will show us how often and for how long the manta rays visit these sites. It will elucidate how far they move up and down the coastline and if they have preferences for specific areas. This will give us information on where their critical habitats and important movement corridors are located, indicating possible locations for future conservation efforts.

Some of our preliminary research efforts already showed some very interesting behaviour of these animals. For example, they seemed to only visit inshore sites during the day, and spend their time elsewhere during the night. Although they seemed to travel up and down the then 95-kilomtere acoustic array, they also showed strong preferences for specific areas. With our newly expanded array, we hope to find out more on their movements and habitat use.

SEEtheWILD’s funding has enabled us to buy the little, much-needed transmitters.  In the next six months we will be deploying 30 of these tags and we hope to follow the movements of these elusive rays for one to two years. The data gathered from this study will greatly aid us in developing an effective conservation strategy for the reef manta rays here in Mozambique. So a big thank you to SEEtheWILD and to everyone who voted!

Shark Fin Soup or Shark Conservation Travel?

by David McGuire, Shark Stewards

(Dreamstime.com)

The Great White shark slides effortlessly up from the blue depths.  At first an intangible shape, one twist of the powerful tail transforms the distant fish into a formidable reality.  There are few experiences as exciting as diving with a shark in the wild. I have been diving and surfing around sharks most of my life yet actually seeing the shark is a rare experience. 

Thanks to films like Jaws and Shark Week, our perception is that sharks are vicious man eating beasts out to tear any unsuspecting victim to pieces. The truth is quite the opposite, and most sharks swim away when sensing a human presence.  Even the large predatorial species like White sharks and Tiger sharks investigate and generally avoid humans. Of the approximately five hundred of species of sharks, most are less than three feet long, and only a few species are responsible for biting humans.

Death by shark attack is more rare than lightening strikes, yet the perception remains that sharks are dangerous. In fact, many species of shark are becoming endangered.

Shark population estimates are difficult to come by, and most fisheries do not account for sharks, yet we do know that shark populations are experiencing significant declines from overfishing, to longlining, to shark finning.

(Terry Goss / Marine Photobank)

Shark finning is the practice of catching a shark, cutting off the fins and discarding the still living shark overboard. This wasteful and cruel practice is driven by the relatively new demand for the Asian delicacy shark fin soup. Shark fin, known in China as yu chi or “fish wing,” is used as a textural additive to shark fin soup–a delicacy consumed by wealthy and powerful Chinese since at least the start of the Sung dynasty in 960 A.D. Once valued by a small group of the elite, growing prosperity has created broader demand for this high-status dish to celebrate weddings or business luncheons. A burgeoning demand for shark fin soup in both Asia and the West motivates fishers to kill the sharks only for their fins. Although shark meat brings pennies on the pound and can spoil rapidly on a boat, the dried fin can bring up to $800 a pound, and as much as $100 a bowl.

One study estimates that at the current rate of exploitation some large oceanic shark species may be completely fished out by the year 2050. Over 100 species, including great white sharks, are vulnerable or threatened. Although research indicates that apex predators like sharks are important for maintaining healthy ocean ecosystems, sharks are at best disregarded, or at worst killed for a few fins. With a few slices, a transition from sleek ocean predator to a handful of high-priced body parts is easily achieved.

(Jessica King / Marine Photobank)

Finning is an ignoble death for an animal so consummately adapted to the sea. With only a tiny percentage of the animal consumed, this practice is also a terrible waste of food for a growing population reliant on protein from the sea. Despite recent estimates that less than 10 percent remain of some large oceanic shark populations, the hunt for shark fins is escalating, and the practice is unregulated in most parts of the world.

Diving the Channel Islands of Santa Barbara as a marine biology student, we would frequently encounter Blue sharks, a delicately built shy shark about six feet long.  Yet even these gentle creatures are becoming increasingly rare as they suffer death as bycatch in the tuna longline and swordfish gillnet fishery. Once commonly seen at these islands, I haven’t seen a blue shark in over a decade.

After five years of effort, Sea Stewards and a host of non-profits worked together to pass a shark fin trade ban in California.  The law that goes fully into effect this year will make the sale, possession and the trade of shark fin illegal in the state. Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Illinois have followed suit, and five other US states are considering similar legislation including Texas which is experiencing poaching of sharks from Mexico and where we have just introduced legislation to ban the trade of shark fin. Cites and even some countries across the globe are implementing similar legislation to stop the destruction of shark populations.

Increasingly, our curiosity is transforming from morbid fear to intrigue and excitement, as divers are experiencing sharks first hand through dive tourism. Perhaps seeing sharks first-hand–whether in a cage, an aquarium, or in the open ocean–will motivate more people to protect them. My own experience diving and filming sharks in the wild has convinced me that sharks are beautiful animals, and that all ocean life is important and worth protecting.

Ways to Get Involved:

•       Are any restaurants serving shark fin soup in your town? If so, please share a petition to stop such practice. If such petition does not exist in your town, then make one!
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•       Swim for Sharks is a shark protection campaign aimed at limiting shark finning and the shark fin trade. The funding will be used to complete a short but effective film to promote shark awareness and save sharks from extinction. The film will help us reach a broad audience through p
  
  
  romotion at film festivals, schools and on social media to promote shark and ocean awareness. Contributions will also help support our Texas Shark Fin Ban.
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•       Go on a Shark Conservation Tour to the Cocos Islands, the Galapagos, Isla MujeresMexico, or Belize.