OLIVE RIDLEY SEA TURTLE

COSTA RICA'S INCREDIBLE ARRIBADAS

This year, she had reached sexual maturity and she was returning for her first arribada.

Gathering of the Arribada

As it has done for uncountable eons, the moon was gracing the earth with its seemingly everlasting phases. Though she could not know it, it was drawing this olive ridley turtle ashore.

She was not alone. At first, a few yards away, another olive ridley sea turtle joined her, then a third, followed by a dozen, then hundreds, thousands, now tens of thousands of marine sea turtles. For more than one hundred million years it had been thus: vast migrations of ancient creatures, culminating when the moon was in this phase.

Nature is always magical. Just a few months ago, this turtle was foraging in the middle of the Pacific Ocean more than 2,500 miles away. And the multitude of sea turtles now alongside her were scattered across several million square miles of ocean.

Although there was plenty of food far out in the Pacific, something had begun to stir within her. Hundreds of thousands of marine turtles felt the same timeless need to return to Costa Rica. They, and she, were all going back to where they had hatched.

Now, as she waited in the soft moonlight, she was ready. Over the thousands of miles she had swum she had been bred by several different olive ridley sea turtle males in the clear tropical waters because they, too, were being affected by something unseen, a force primeval. It was something so compelling that it had been bringing her kind back to the same Costa Rica beach since the days of dinosaurs.

Somehow, this olive ridley sea turtle was returning to the very beach where had hatched in 1995. No one knows how a Pacific marine turtle finds the exact beach where she started life. Ostional Beach is only a few hundred meters in length.

Now part of Costa Rica's Ostional National Wildlife Refuge, it is probably the most important olive ridley marine turtle nesting site on earth.

Indeed, the year this turtle hatched, about 500,000 females had nested here in incredible "arribadas."

For 20 years, the mother of this hundred pound marine turtle joined massive Ostional arribadas every year and she would have done so again except that she drowned in an illegal shrimping net just a few weeks ago.

Thousands more perished by long line commercial fishermen. Even more died needlessly by ingesting plastic bags carelessly discarded.

So many have been killed, the race is endangered.



But, neither our turtle nor the thousands alongside her know any of this. As they gather, they are now so many that it seems one could almost walk on their backs for a mile or more.

They don't realize they were on earth long before the first Tyrannosaurus Rex or that when they lay their eggs on this tiny wildlife refuge, men will lawfully dig up nests and take up to 3,000,000 eggs in return for protecting the rest of the clutches and preserving the species. They only know this: Ostional is their beach.

Then, though no one knows why, it happens.

As quietly as they first appeared, as silently as they gathered, their patience has been rewarded and they begin to come ashore. A single olive ridley turtle followed by a second. Then there are hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands---even more than that---each intent on one task: bringing new life.

All night they come. And all day, day after day. It is a wonder of magnificent Costa Rica and as timeless as the phases of the moon. It is the spectacular display of life called Arribada.

See it for yourself on your Costa Rica vacation.

NOTE It is true that a huge number of turtle eggs are harvested each year at Ostional but the collection lasts only for about 36 hours and represents a tiny fraction of eggs laid during the season---many of which would have been destroyed by turtles themselves nesting later. Conservationists agree that this collection is contributing to the preservation--not destruction--of this species. Facts about Olive Ridley Sea Turtle collection at Ostional

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