Mote staff members have been receiving questions regarding an e-mail entitled "World Shame on Beaches in Costa Rica."  This e-mail — which claims to show people illegally digging up turtle eggs for later sale — has been circulating for a few years now and is a hoax.

 

The truth is that the images depict the legal harvest of olive ridley eggs in Costa Rica. This harvest is regulated and is part of a sustainable egg harvest for sea turtles.



WIDECAST, the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Network, put together a note containing accurate information that we are sharing here. Please feel free to share this with those interested in sea turtles.



From WIDECAST:
"
I don't know how these photos got started, but the originator would have been wise to have done his/her homework first. The photos depict a formal co-management model between the University of Costa Rica, a community organization called ADIO, and the Ministry of Natural Resources (MINAET) in Costa Rica.

It's a legal harvest of surplus eggs from the olive ridley arribada colony at Playa Ostional on the Pacific coast. (An arribada is a mass nesting of sea turtles, characteristic of Kemp's and olive ridley turtles (Lepidochelys kempii and Lepidochelys olivacea).



In such a nesting strategy, the turtles will nest simultaneously with the result that natural predators may be “overwhelmed” and sufficient numbers of eggs/hatchlings are produced to maintain the species.

Arribadas can involve many thousands of turtles nesting day and night for several days. The downside is that the turtles regularly dig up each others’ eggs, causing destruction not only to those eggs, but, due to bacterial decomposition of the broken eggs, gross contamination of the surrounding sand.

As a result, arribada beaches often realize a very small (1-2%) hatch success. The scenario may seem maladapted, but in reality the olive ridley is the most numerous sea turtle species in the world, so the strategy clearly reflects a successful evolutionary strategy.



The egg harvest at Ostional is a strongly regulated and legal, emphasizing a sustainable harvest of eggs that are [otherwise] doomed to be destroyed by subsequent arribadas. The following facts are useful:

1. The program is regulated under a co-management model between University of Costa Rica, a community organization called ADIO, and the Costa Rica Ministry of Natural Resources.



2. Every 5 years the program is reviewed and the egg harvest management plan is reviewed and updated as needed, then submitted to the Government for approval.
 

3. The current plan notes that:
•    The current density of nests is 11 nests per square meter (olive ridleys can only sustain about two nests per meter without impacting hatchling emergence success).
•    During the arribadas (which happen more or less monthly), the females dig up the nests of previous nesting events.
•    Due to the high level of egg breakage, putrefaction rates are very high and the resulting high levels of fungus and bacteria contaminate 100% of nests, reducing emergence success to near zero. Removal of surplus eggs has actually the population because it increases the hatch success by 5%.
•    Eggs can only be harvested during the first 36 hours of an arribada.
•    To be declared an “arribada," more than 80 adult females must be nesting simultaneously.

4. The egg harvest program employs 300 local people and the gross income from the program is about $150,000 USD. About 15% of the eggs are harvested.

While there are constant concerns about the balance between maintaining the community’s desire and tradition to harvest and consume (or sell) the eggs and the need to protect this precious resource on balance the program is widely viewed as a progressive example of pragmatic conservation."


—WIDECAST