The Little Turtle

Can you imagine if only one in a thousand human babies survived? The population would be very small and we would probably be an endangered species. Luckily, this isn’t the case for us, but for endangered sea turtles it is a reality. Some of the older turtles, which are 140 to 160 year old, can lay hundreds of eggs every time they go ashore. However, only one or two of these eggs survive. Some turtles have been known to live more than 250 years, but because of poachers few actually survive that long. The cycle of life for the turtle is hard, and the beginning is a very rare thing to witness. I had the amazing opportunity to see these humongous creatures lay their eggs one hot night in Costa Rica. A few summers ago, I was living in San Jose, Costa Rica, and one weekend my dad and I went to Turtoquero. The first day in this island town, we went on a rainforest tour. On this walk, we saw amazing animals like the loud howler monkey, the mystical white-faced monkey, a deadly poisonous snake, and several terrifying spiders. We had heard that at this time of the year, the sea turtles would come on shore and lay their eggs. This is a very rare opportunity, so my dad quickly got two tickets for a midnight beach tour.
Dressed in dark colors and good walking shoes, we started out around 8 p.m. Baby turtles navigate toward the beach by following the light of the moon. However, they can easily get confused, so only our group leader had a small, red flashlight to lead us.
In broken English our guide explained, “If a turtle was to see a lot of movement or flashing lights, it might get scared and lay its eggs in the ocean instead of on the beach.