Vacation In Costa Rica And Witness Arribada: The Incredible Spectacle Of Sea Turtles

By Author: Victor Krumm
Total Articles: 17
Comment this article

For nature lovers a little known Costa Rica vacation is an arribada--or "massive arrival" --of olive ridley sea turtles . It is one of the natural world's wonders.

A very long time ago, the first olive ridley sea turtles arrived on our planet. Today, these ancients are in danger, a fact that is really hard to believe because, after all, they've been on earth more than one hundred million years.

To put some perspective onto this number, consider the ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex. It roamed North America sixty-five million years ago and, as surely as the sun rises and sets, it feasted on these sea turtles when they came ashore to lay their eggs.

These ancient animals have flourished for unimaginable eons, despite being prey for nearly everything under the sun for tens of millions of generations. Incredibly, probably thirty million generations of marine turtles were preyed upon by reptiles and other dinosaurs and fierce ocean predators before the first Tyrannosaurus Rex walked the earth and, since then, another 70,000,000 generations have suffered the same fate. Still, they thrived.

They ...
... even survived the greatest catastrophe the earth has suffered, the mass extinction that destroyed every mighty dinosaur on earth. Sea turtles not only survived the cataclysm, they flourished.

They spread, over eons, across the face of the earth, until, these oldest of all reptiles populated all of the tropical and temperate seas. They were common from the Americas east to the Arabian Sea and from Pacific coast of the New World to India. Tens upon tens of millions, and maybe even more, of olive ridleys. They seemed to be limitless.

In 1951, the same year that Americans began to watch "I Love Lucy", the seas were still full of olive ridley turtles. Mexico's Pacific coast alone hosted ten million olive ridley nests when the first episode of that popular comedy aired. Every nest had about 100 eggs per clutch.

That's about a billion eggs.

A billion olive ridley eggs laid along just one coast of that country in just one year. And, remember, these marine turtles were found virtually everywhere there were warm or temperate waters. The numbers were limitless. So it seemed.

So many turtle eggs, so easily gathered, so much money to be made. During the incredible arribadas, or nestings, massive pack trains of horses and donkeys carried out hundreds of millions of eggs each nesting season.

Unfortunately, this mindless avarice was being repeated around the world.

While this was happening, country-after-country, sanctioned sea turtle fisheries.

The result was that olive ridley turtles went from limitless to endangered in a couple of decades. A single generation of humans accomplished what had seemed impossible: almost wiping out in the blink of an eye what had taken a hundred million generations to create.

Fortunately, some countries belatedly recognized the extent of depredation and began to take steps to conserve and protect these turtles. Little Costa Rica helped lead the way, creating refuges and working with dedicated conservationists and their residents to not only conserve what was left but to rebuild stocks.

Ostional Beach, on Costa Rica's Pacific coast, almost certainly has world's largest arribadas of olive ridley sea turtles. The spanish word "arribada" means "arrival", a very apt description of one of nature's great phenomena. Every month, often when the moon is in its last quarter, female turtles gather offshore , then suddenly come ashore sometimes at the rate of 200 an hour.

The largest arribadas are usually from June through November and the biggest mass nesting in recent years was half a million females coming ashore in 1995.

If you are interested in Costa Rica ecotourism, this is something you must see. Though olive ridleys come to about forty beaches, the greatest arribadas occur at Ostional Beach, about an hour south of the popular tourist city of Tamarindo and at Nancite Beach, north of Tamarindo.
About the author: Vic Krumm lives in sunny Costa Rica. Check out his very beautiful website Costa Rica Vacations and see why Costa Rica Tourism is world-renowned.