The Cocos Island Marine Turtle Tagging Research Project

The Cocos Island Marine Turtle Tagging Research Project

by

costarica-discover-it.com

A scientific satellite tagging expedition recently got underway at Cocos Island to study migrations of its green sea turtle and hawksbill visitors.

Researchers and conservationists travel Costa Rica open waters for 30 hours or more in their pursuit of migration habits about these ancient marine animals. Think of what they do as a kind of working Costa Rica vacation that, hopefully, will contribute to saving these marvelous marine reptiles now sadly endangered in much of their range.

Cocos Island, once described by the famed oceanographer, Jacque Cousteau, as the most beautiful island he had ever seen, lies some 340 miles off the shore of Costa Rica, about halfway to the Galapagos Islands.

It was not the pretty palm trees or beaches that captured the imagination of the Captain. Its beauty lies off its shores, under water, in a place that Costa Ricans have voted one of the Seven Wonders of Cost Rica.

Cocos Island has fired the imagination of novelists, seafarers, and pirates for more than 300 years and today it is probably the most famous island in the world.

Everybody knows about Cocos Island, whether living in Bangalore, India, or Anchorage, Alaska, the great cities of Europe or the Outback of Australia.

Say what? You don’t know it? Well, probably you know it by its more well known name: Jurassic Park. That’s what writer Michael Crichton called this remote island, which he used as its setting.

Or, maybe, when you were first learning to read, you knew it as Treasure Island.

130 years before there was a Captain Jack Sparrow, another swashbuckling pirate, Long John Silver, captured the imagination of childhood readers and even Walt Disney. Some folks think Cocos inspired that Robert Lewis Stevenson tale.

However, setting aside tall tales, this little island was a popular Costa Rica vacation spot for real pirates. Because if was far off the sailing lanes of the English pirate hunting fleets, it offered a safe place and an abundance of coconuts, a favorite ingredient in pirate drink.

It also was a great place to bury treasure and, indeed, even to this day, two fabulous booties, the Devonshire and Lima Treasures, may still be hidden there.

The Island is considered by many divers to be the finest place on earth for large marine animal viewing.

There is an incredible variety of fish and marine mammals, from huge whale sharks to tiny toad fish, and everything in between, not to mention porpoises and whales, in its fertile waters.

Sea turtles have been swimming the oceans of the world since the days of dinosaurs. Imagine Tyrannosaurus Rex feeding on them 200 million years ago when they went ashore to lay their eggs.

These ancient beings swim all the oceans of the world except the Arctic and Antarctic.

Once, the populations of marine turtles were so massive that lost sailors found land by listening for the sounds of sea turtles paddling towards nesting grounds.

Unfortunately, no more. Today, our indiscriminate beach development and robbing of their nests have put them at risk.

Millions were slaughtered in South America to make stylish Italian shoes, combs, and household ornaments.

Huge caravans of mules and horses carried off billions of eggs from the Mexican and Central American beaches. Even today eggs are poached to be sold in bars as aphrodisiacs.

However, many countries around the world, aided by researchers and conservationists have taken note of terribly declining numbers of marine turtles.

Captain Cousteau once sadly said: “If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect..”

But, some governments and conservationists have not given up and are working to turn around the decline turtle populations.

Researchers are now tagging pelagic turtles like the green sea turtle in far-away places like Cocos Island. Some turtles are fitted with flipper tags while others bear satellite transmitters to help monitor their migrations and it has been discovered that some species swim thousands and thousands of miles of oceans, from tropical waters to the cold and deep waters off Newfoundland, Canada.

Perhaps we can still save these survivors.

We cannot undo the past but we are not condemned to its repetition.

Author Victor Krumm lives in Costa Rica. Visit his popular site

Costa Rica Vacations

and check out the spectacular

Seven Wonders of Costa Rica

Article Source:

ArticleRich.com