Save the Turtles and Beach Clean-Up

The main reason for this project is to protect our Biodiversity from all the dangers that threaten it: such as humans, pollution, etc. It is for this reason that your help as a Volunteer is very important.

We work with all the Natioional Parks of Costa Rica, Wildlife Refuge, Wetlands, Biological and Forest Reserves

This project pretend to protect More than a half of the Turtles are in extinction. Loss of habitat is the number one threat to turtles around the world. Other threats include the baby turtles using like pets and eggs trade, overconsumption for food and medicine, pollution and climate change. 

The Trash can travel through all the rivers and oceans of the world, and accumulate on beaches and in ocean gyres. These wastes damage physical habitats, transport chemical pollutants, threaten aquatic life, and interfere with human use of rivers and river, marine, and coastal environments.

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.

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.

1. BEACH CLEANING: 

Schedule:

Volunteer work schedules are generally in the morning hours, 8am till noon 12:00am. Since walking the beach is sometimes tiring to do all day long. We divide our work day in morning or afternoon shifts. / 8am-12:00am or 1:00 pm
Weather is better in the morning for the beach and coast clean ups. Walking the beach and coastlines and then separating the plastic retrievals for proper recycling, or reusing purposes. After each clean up, we generally clean and wash all the equipment (reusable bags) and uniforms.

Volunteer Camp Chores:
If a specific day we do not do a beach clean up, we use our time productively doing chores in our camp volunteer camp. Cleaning uniforms, washing our equipment, painting for maintenance purposes, or simply helping out preparing meals.
With volunteers we also help out in several ecological projects implemented by the program. We have a Butterfly farm, an Hydroponic garden, or helping out maintaining the trails for birdwatching like sign elaboration and painting.

2. SAVING THE TURTLES:

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

On their free time, volunteers have plenty of activities. Since we are secure inside the project, we don’t only count with our own activities, but can also participate in the project activities without an additional cost.  The Guanacaste Area counts with beautiful beaches, supermarket, and  restaurants.

All these activities include:

• Snorkeling
• Surfing lessons
• Kayak tours
• Paddleboard tours
•  Hiking and Trailrunning
• Waterfall visits
• Beach soccer
• Dancing lessons
• Waterpolo
• Beach Volleyball
• Fusball
• Tennis court
• Bingo nights
• Table games
• Bird watching