Little Turtle, Big Dreams

Earlier this year, I was out on the beach in Costa Rica with a nesting turtle that dug her nest pit far too close to the ocean. She laid most of her clutch, and a wave washed over everything (including the students and researchers behind her). It was a flurry of turtle fins, sand, and soggy sneakers. What a disaster!

Sea turtles drag their huge bodies up sloping beaches expressly so their eggs can escape the lethal effects of salty ocean water, and incubate safely in the warm tropical sand. Nesting Lesson #1: Eggs go in the nest cavity—not sea water. When this turtle started to lay, it was obvious that she was too close to the tide line, so the research assistants had already placed a bag in the pit to collect the eggs as she laid them. When the water rushed in, the eggs were quickly lifted out of the hole, saltwater and all. This turtle’s ineptitude at nest site selection was ironic considering turtles have nested here for about 100 million years.

Which makes one wonder, what’s genetic vs. learned? That is, perhaps genetically driven instincts led her to this exact location on this beach, and pushed her to drag her massive body out of the water to lay eggs, but could it be that nest site selection is a learned behavior? It’s no simple task to choose a good spot. You’ve got to consider the tides, erosion, temperature, moisture, density, and beach angle. The eggs incubate for two months, so things like predators, logs and debris may arrive later to affect the little hatchlings as they dig themselves out and scurry by moonlight back to the water.

This turtle’s carapace measured just 135cm (about 4 ½ feet), which is about as small we’ve seen laying eggs. The nesting season had just begun a week ago, there was no record of her ever coming to nest previously (she had no tags and no tag holes or scars), and so it’s possible that this turtle was nesting for the first time in her life. Do you remember doing something monumentally important for the first time in your life? Sometimes you just don’t get it right.

So if choosing a place to lay your eggs is like tying your shoes, and this small turtle is also a young turtle, maybe she’s tying her shoes for the first time.

The eggs were hefted out of the deep hole in the ground, along with some ocean water, then drained and relocated to higher ground. The nest was marked, and we’ll know in a couple months if any little turtles hatch and return to the sea.

Leatherback sea turtles may reach reproductive maturity at 10 years of age, and since this is EPI’s 10th anniversary, it’s just possible that this nesting turtle was once an egg protected by an EPI student during our first field programs in 2000! As co-founder of this organization, this is a profound possibility from a conservation, educational, and personal perspective. It’s also a pretty big stretch to believe that that’s true – but that’s ok. I’ve always preferred to think about what’s possible more than what’s probable.

We’ll keep an eye out for this little turtle to see if she comes back this year (typically leatherbacks nest 7-9 times during the season), and gets better at tying her shoes.