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2006/2007 Volunteers, Emma,Tyler,Craig,Danger Ranger,Albert -- with
Joey.
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2007/2008 Technicians: David, Joey, Marc (Director), Jessie - Team Alpha-
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2008/2009 Technicians: Lindsey, William. Not pictured: Joey, Marc (Director).
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06/07 Season
We continued hatching our nests insitu this season and had over 90% hatch success rates on our nests! We conducted sea
turtle conservation presentations at 7 schools handing out over 500 coloring books and donated art supplies. We
delivered circle hooks from NOAA to Pretoma to help decrease sea turtle by catch. They have had some good
results after two observed experiments, it looks good for the turtles if prelimenary reports are correct. We also had 0 dead
Sea Turtles on the beach during the 06/07 season, down from 13 the previous year. Thanx to NOAA -- Endangered Resources, they
are finding ways to protect our precious Marine Turtles from industrial fishing. Three cheers mate! Our technical capabilities were enhanced with the help of Clatsop Comminity College
this season. Craig Lee, Tyler Laird, and Emma Carpenter did a 6 week internship bringing GPS technology on loan from the college
and also a metal detector to experiment with our new nest locating strategy. Dr. Micheal Bunch has been a key element
in co-ordinating our efforts with Clatsop Community College to develop a great hands-on field course available to our Oregon
students. Randall Arauz
-- our mentor from Pretoma has discovered a new species of shark in Costa Rica that had previously been mis-identified,
now with DNA technology he was able to identify the mistake. Randall has also headed up the experimental circle hook fishery
to find a possible answer to the Long-line/Turtle conflict.
Mistral Dobson- from Australia and did tremendous work with " Team Alpha", we had the advantage
of doing in-depth comparisons of the Eastern and Western Chelonia Mydas. The differences were marked, and we were very
fortunate to have her on the team.
We had about a $16,000 dollar budget in 06/07 with which we climbed mountains. All the school seminars in Cosa Rica,
and Oregon had priceless impact alone. And the local community of Los Pargos which has been surviving on the eggs for
generations prospered. Our project and the volunteers that showed up to do field work spent about $30,000 in the community
of Los Pargos. That is compared with $1000-2000 that would have been brought in by illegally selling sea turtle eggs
at local prices. The locals were asking me how much the project spent because they are seeing that turtles are worth
alot more alive than dead --- and that was one of our original goals. It's
working folks, the people get to see our In-Situ nest hatches every night now ( 2-3 per night at peak) and most of them
have never seen this before because all the eggs were gone, they are seeing what they have been missing now. We hatched out
thousands of endanged sea turtles this year!!! Look
for STF 2, a home made film on marine plastics debris management on Punta Pargos. I have just flat out been to swamped
to spend time up-dateing the web-site lately but there is more to the story, and budget went a long long way
to improving the chances for survival of our critically endangered Eastern Chelonia Mydas. We made every penny count.
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The 07/08 season A complete success for
STF. We managed to secure a large percentage of the total nests laid and also had very high reproductive success on the
clutches. We translocated a small percentage of nests, with good results. We have seen that poachers have begun to learn our
strategies and are preparing to change our methodology to include relocation of all nests in heavily poached locations. We
have tried to keep our In-Situ methodology in place but at this time it seems the poachers are getting close to figuring out
how to locate our secured nests. Although this season was successful, after operating for 5 years, the poachers have learned
allot about how we operate and seem to be more aware of our methods. The price for eggs is also going up due to the decrease
in supply we have created. So it seems that the level of effort to poach the eggs is rising even though fewer poachers are
operating. Many of the people who were poaching in the past have stopped and are letting our project thrive, but the handful
of hard core poachers, with and increased effort, are still managing to beat us to a small percentage of the nests even with
nightly and twice nightly patrols. In addition to anti-poaching and monitoring patrols this season we also conducted the "Lance Ferris
Memorial Challenge." This entailed collecting and sorting a ton of plastic off of our nesting beaches. To see the results
of this research see the Lance Ferris page. The season continued with providing much need data on our Green sea turtle population. Thank you to everyone
who helped!
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2008/2009 Season
We have undertaken a new level of research on the Punta Pargos. Project
this winter. In collaboration the Costa Rican Interior Ministry, Randall Arauz and the team at Pretoma, started an Inconel
(visible) tagging operation to closely monitor the nesting activities of our Chelonia Mydas cohort. This will give us the
ability to gather data on growth and productivity of individuals with more accuracy. By monitoring the growth of our nesting
females we can monitor changes in growth rates and determining the health of the food supply they forage on, we can gather
new information by drawing comparisons with other cohorts that are being monitored around the globe. Migratory information
we will gather will help us more effectively address threats to the turtles during their migrations, and coordinate fisheries
to lessen their impact on migrating cohorts. We are working with the Costa Rican MINAE, which is very important, the MINAE
is responsible for Wildlife, Trees, and septic, all dynamics that directly affect the health of our nesting turtles. The project
has been kept alive with volunteer support from people who have seen the importance and value of a healthy marine turtle population
in the Eastern Pacific, as well as the individual effort of our dedicated program director on Punta Pargos. This
season was the hardest fought effort to date, with the economy in trouble and the price of eggs almost doubled, we met with
a new level of determination by the hard core poachers. We have had to adjust our tactics and are now re-locating all Chelonia
Mydas nests that are in heavily poached sectors of the beach, also relocating all other nests we deem threatened. We move
the nests to a new chamber away from the original location to where there is no sign of nesting activity. This adjustment
to our tactics has proved successful. The one nest that was poached after relocation was a
fluke. A Green Turtle came in and nested very close to one of our relocate nests from two weeks earlier.We exhumed and relocated
the eggs from the second nest but the nest was still probed heavily after we left by poachers. We went early in the morning
to check the fresh nest and to see if it was dug on, we caught two young kids just after they had dug up the eggs from the
two-week-old nest. They did not know I was the MINAE investigator and so told me they dug up the nest and the eggs are "old",
so they were feeding them to their dog. When someone is feeding endangered species to their dog it is kind of a sickening
feeling for me. I told them I was a MINAE investigator and they were shocked, I scorned them for digging up the eggs and told
them if I caught them again they would have restitution to pay. I asked them if they were hungry and hunting the eggs for
food, they said "not really" and I took the ruined eggs, disgusted by their disregard or ignorance ( both?)to the crime. I
explained to them that the turtles nesting here are heading for extinction and they would destroy the resource for themselves
and future generations if they keep harvesting eggs illegally. Then I walked the eggs down the beach 100 meters and re-buried
them. Those eggs were ruined but I still reburied them so they could benefit the coastal eco-sphere ....by feeding the Buttonwood
trees that secure the beach from erosion. Feeding a dog eggs will make the dog want to return again, and develop a taste for
the eggs, and hunt them himself.That was the only relocated nest we lost, the level of effort to find our nests has been elevated
significantly this year. Our new nest management tactics are unbeatable. We gather the eggs
directly from the turtle as they fall and then relocate them to a new chamber. The turtle never feels a thing and will continue
to cover the nest just as if the eggs are still there. The poacher comes along and sees a perfectly laid nest, yet we have recently
relocated the clutch of eggs. The poacher will dig and dig believing the eggs are still there, so he has to work even harder
for nothing. After two months of this tactic some nests were left un-molested even thought they looked perfect (after we moved
the eggs). This is at a time when after 6 years of operating the same tactics we were compromised by the fact the poachers
had figured out our procedures and were adjusting their own tactics to find the eggs. We have been struggling for years to
stop the poaching and it gives me great pleasure to have developed a tactic that not only works 99% of the time but also makes
the poachers pay a penance by having to dig for nothing. The hatch success off the nests we translocated this season was exceptional,
better than some of the nests left in their original location . We had several recoveries AS HIGH AS 100%.
New research we conducted this season shows the incubation temperatures on Punta Pargos are ideal for mix sex ratios, just
what is needed to help restore this nesting population!
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