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Published: October 16th 2017
Hola!
Made it safely to Liberia and picked up by Javi the project lead at Cabuyal Leatherback project, he is from Southern Spain. We stopped for some food and a beer before driving 40 mins to the camp, the last leg of the journey included an unsurfaced road, a river crossing and the final section a muddy trail to the camp entrance, only reachable by 4 x 4.
Four other people already at the camp, Emma (volunteer) from Seattle, Claudia (Turtle research assistant) from Mexico, Adam from California and Kelsey from Ohio, both the latter completing their theses for their Biology Masters serving as research assistants.
Emma heads off similar time to me in early Dec and the others are all here until March!
There is a larger Leatherback project a couple of hours away on Playa Grande, but is expensive to participate in having air con, washing m/c and other luxuries! Our Cabuyal camp is a bit more rustic and more of an adventure lol.
The camp is situated within mangroves and dry tropical forest, consists of one main building with four bedrooms and a bathroom/shower, a building for the
kitchen area and another outside bathroom/shower. As I said very rustic! Cold showers, toilet paper in bins, one solar panel for couple of lights and charging stuff. A cool box for a fridge and plastic containers for food stuff (to keep the mice and other critters away!) and a 4 ring gas stove for cooking. We can drink the tap water as it comes from natural springs run off from the mountains.
Since being here I have seen; tarantula, scorpion, vultures, woodpeckers, frogs, cane toads, racoon, squirrell, fire ants (all over my foot!) also heard but not seen howler monkeys.
There are some crocs about but not seen any yet.....
Once you have been here for a couple of days you soon aclimatise to the conditions and is actually fine, but I am sure many of you could not live like this..... hardest part is sleeping in the heat.
I have had no alcohol and only eaten meat once.... meat and beer today in Liberia!!
Every Monday a few of us get to go into the nearest town on the food shopping trip, where wifi and restaraunt food can be
had, so approx every 2 weeks is when I can get wifi, maybe a few extra inbetween.
Still need to get a local SIM and am told that can get a signal from a hill and beach near us, but still limited. I cant unlock my O2 phone for local sim so will have to use an old Nokia, not sure how that will work until I sort my SIM out today.
There are 3 o 4 other houses in the area and the beach is used by local and tourists during holidays in dry season which is Dec onwards.
The project here has been running since 2011 and its purpose is to help preserve the three species of turtle that visit this remote beach (Leatherback, East Pacific Green, Oliver Ridley).
Our main tasks are:
Night beach Patrol, usually leave around 2000, walk to the beach, approx 30 mins and then walk the length of the beach looking for turtle tracks, head North then South. We then wait (take a nap) for 40 mins and then walk back up the beach. This repeats until approx 0200, or later if turtles are about.
If a turtle is spotted layng then we have to record species, size, tag ID (or tag if not already), turtle condition, triangulate nest position and relocate if required eg in tidal zone.
Morning walk
Leave 0500 walk to beach, walk length of beach looking for turtle tracks, record anything.
Temps
There are four locations where we have thermocouples buried in the sand at different depths, we uncover the connectors and record the 5 different depth temperatures at each location. This is carried out every other day.
Other tasks
A rota is set for the above tasks plus general activities such as cooking lunch and dinner.
We do a camp clean up three times a week.
We play dominoes to select our tasks and also for determining who washes the dishes!!
I have been fixing things like water supply leaks, repairing mosquito meshscreens, starting a new garden have planted chillies, water melon, cucumber, pineapple and lemons all from seeds from our food.
The truck had a puncture so changed the wheel only to find the spare was flat... doh!
Also plenty of time to
read or chill in hammocks.
The storm that stopped me getting here has drastically changed the profile of the beach in that sand has been dragged out to sea, vegetation ripped out, rubbish washed in shore and in some areas it is now rocky!
This means the tide comes up higher now and may casue an issue for turtles trying to nest, the Leatherbacks are large and can climb up the berm to lay higher up the beach. The team had sighted 9 nesting turtles before i got here but it has been quiet since the storm.
However on my second night patrol we saw 1 green and 1 Ridley, but neither nested as could not get up the berm. Acouple of mornings later Javi and I saw tracks on the morning patrol but also found couple of eggs so that was a failed nest.
BUT my next patrol we had 3 Ridleys nest, 2 needed tagging, we measured all of them (approx 70 cm in length) we had to remove the eggs as they laid and relocate above the high tide line.
This involves digging a new nest the
same shape as the mother would (by hand), placing in the eggs (80 to 120) and triangulating the nest position so it can be excavated once the hatchlings have gone, this is to see the hatch % success.
It was a tiring niight but an amazing feeling.
No pictures as we try not to use lights, only using red light when required, flash photography on a turtle nesting beach is not a good idea as can scare them away...
They reckon only 1 in a thousand hatchlings survive once in the sea and will not be able to nest until 20 years time!
Adam has been using a drone to map the beach, it is a great piece of kit with autopilot etc
I have been helping him by being his launch and landing pad lol and spotting to keep an eye out for birds attacking the drone. One day we saw something bobbing in the water about 300m out, we sent the drone out and it was 2 green turtles mating!!
Emma and I have done a couple of beach clean ups, flip flops, toothbrushes, plastic bottles, straws and
various bits of plastic, bloody humans!
I have been reading a book on turtles at the camp, it states that when Columbus was sailing to the Cayman Islands for the first time (1503) his son wrote about thesea of turtles and named the islands Las Tortugas. Several hundred years later all the turtles had gone (eaten) so they moved to Cuba and so on... Turtles have been eaten by humans for thousands of years, having been around for millions of years, but there were less of us then so was sustainable.
They would capture the turtles, turn them upside down to keep them fresh (several months) and then butcher them.
Nowadays they are still eaten and eggs poached but also suffer from various types of fishing (turtles can only stay underwater for approx an hour before need to surface) with nets and lines. Also habitats for nesting turned into holiday beach resorts and of course our plastic bag fetish.
So we have gone from a population of 1 billion turtles across the seven species down to numbers lower than 100,000 per species, some in the tens of thousands, sad ....
My knee has been improving but
twisted it again the other day! Foot swollen like elephant man lol but will be fine.
So all in all plenty to keep me occupied, mainly sunny but with some rain.
Adios for now,
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Jaroslaw Orlik
non-member comment
Hey Marko
Good to see you Bro, Looks very interesting, how is your knee? Keep it protected for a wile to avoid any more damage to it. I glad you all OK. Keep writing the blog whenever you can, i was w looking at the pictures with Ian Bruce (he says hello). great to see you Bro. Take care over there, All the best! J.