Saving The Turtles

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Our projects have the most beautiful vegetation and attractive environment and are located at the Caribbean as well as the Pacific side.

We work with leather back turtles from January to August and with the green sea turtle from August to December, the remaining months we prepared a kind of nest and we works with the community and the school. The project is closed in the end of December.

Leather Back Turtles: Leatherbacks can exceed 540 kg (1180 lbs). Leatherback turtles are generally not killed by poachers for their meat but for their eggs which are among the most desirable turtle eggs.

Green Sea Turtes: Green turtles (Chelonia mydas) are not actually green but take their name from the colour of their body fat. These turtles are hunted for both their eggs and their meat, which is widely held to be the most delicious of all the sea turtle species.

The volunteer will be trained in sea turtle monitoring techniques and will work under the supervision of the Research Coordinators. They will work mainly with adult Leatherback turtles, adult Green turtles and Leatherback hatchlings. Some Hawksbills may arrive to the beach but it's not very common. The primary responsibilities of the Volunteers will include leading night beach censuses, conducting morning beach surveys, tagging and collecting data, and relocating and excavating nests.

Monitoring activities are carried out along 6 km of nesting beach. Volunteers will be in charge of leading volunteers and/or groups of students while on the beach, explaining the beach protocol and supervising them on the process of data collection.

Volunteers are expected to participate in other activities carried out by the Reserve like environmental education activities, talks and workshops with students and volunteers, beach cleaning, recycling projects, or other needs of the station. Volunteers are expected to work long hours throughout day or night, often with little sleep.

Volunteers arrives to San Jose, staying at a hotel, the next day preferably Monday morning take a bus that takes them to a nearby town, (3 hours), then another bus is taken to another community (30 minutes ) and must then take a boat that takes them to the project (30 minutes).

The place is surrounded by nature and is very safe site for volunteers, it is a small community where everyone knows each other and help each other, the Coast Guard station is 200 meters from the project, we don’t have electricity yet, but we have a solar panel that provides us with electricity to charge phones laptop etc. and it provides light for the night.

The turtle activities of the volunteers are: 

• night patrols in different shifts (one group goes from 20:00 to 00:00 and another from 00:00 to 04:00)
  
• working in the care nursery where they carry all eggs to guard them until they hatch (this is done in periods of 4 to 6 hours 24/7 depending on the number of volunteers who have the project) 
  

We also work in social work such as 

• a vegetable garden at the school which is right next to the project 
  
• teaching English at the school 
  
• make composting with coconut fiber
  
• recycling program for plastic
  
• maintenance work the volunteer house take turns every day to help in the kitchen
  
• cleaning the beach
  
• bird monitoring
  
• different occasional social work
  

Normally volunteers have the weekend free to do different activities such as:

• Surf Lessons
  
• Spanish lessons
  
• Tours by the city of Carribean Side , Puerto Viejo Town and Tortuguero Canales
  
• hike to Volcanos
  
• visit Beaches
  
• visit National Parks 
  
• Horse Ride,  Canopy
  

We can help with reservations.