As evening falls, the light grows dim on La Escobilla Beach in Mexico. Slowly, thousands of sea turtles emerge from the waves. They crawl across the sand on unsteady flippers. Each is returning to the beach where it was born many years before. The turtles are back to lay their eggs.
La Escobilla (es-koh-bee-yah) Beach is in Oaxaca (wah-hah-kah), Mexico. It is a big nesting ground for olive ridley sea turtles. Every year from June to December, waves of olive ridleys come ashore to build their nests and lay their eggs. Then the turtles cover the eggs with sand and return to the ocean. In 45 days, the babies hatch and scamper into the ocean. "It's phenomenal," says biologist Wallace J. Nichols.
This ritual has unfolded on coastlines for about 150 million years. Turtles have outlived dinosaurs, but they're no match for modern predators. Many turtles become victims of poachers, or illegal hunters, who kill them for their meat and shells and raid nests for eggs. Sea turtles face many dangers. Some get caught in fishing nets. Others fall victim to the effects of pollution.
Turtle protection
Today, the world's population of sea turtles has become dangerously
small. Scientists warn that without action,
two of the species that live in the Pacific Ocean, the loggerhead and
the leatherback, will be extinct in 30 years.
But the success of a program in Mexico shows that turtle survival is possible. At two major nesting beaches, La Escobilla and Morro Ayuta, the olive ridley population is bouncing back. Officials expect that this year there will be about 1 million olive ridley nests at La Escobilla. That's four times as many as there were in 1990, when sea turtle hunting was banned in Mexico.
What helped to turn the tide? Besides the hunting ban, a combination of community education and tough tactics, says Cuauhtémoc Peñaflores Salazar, the director of the Mexican Center for the Turtle in Oaxaca. Federal agents patrol area beaches, guarding nesting turtles and their eggs.
At the Turtle Center near La Es-cobilla, kids and adults learn about turtle protection. For generations, eating sea turtles and their eggs was a way of life. Today, poachers still sell turtle products. But the community has organized to help the animals. People are learning that a healthy turtle population attracts tourists, who bring money to the area. "When the people understand that they can benefit from the turtles, they want to help the turtles," Salazar told TFK.
Across the Sea
Scientists hope to hatch similar success stories around the world.
Wallace J. Nichols has studied the sea turtle populations of Mexico
since 1992. †He says that Mexico's program is helping to unite
researchers across vast stretches of ocean. "Seeing the success at La
Escobilla inspires people working at other projects," Nichols told TFK.
Other Turtle Trouble
The world's seven species of sea turtles are all on the endangered list. Five of the species can be found along North America's Pacific coast. The four below have been slower than olive ridleys to recover in the Pacific region.