The day-trippers swarmed onto the beach to watch one of nature’s most extraordinary sights, hundreds of thousands of olive ridley sea turtles crawling out of the ocean to lay their eggs in the sand.
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Thousands of sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs on the coast of Costa Rica. People gathering on the beach are actually disturbing the nesting sea turtle. Normally, this protects the turtles and until now tourists have been relatively absent. During the rainy reason, entry of tourists remains restricted because of the risk of flood tide from the swollen Nosara River. The national police had to be called to aid park rangers, but the crowd was too large to be controlled and the chaos ensued.
Instead of quiet observation and caution in the sensitive phase of the turtles, people were loud, taking selfies with the turtles in the background and even putting their children atop the pregnant turtles.
Ministry for the Environment and Energy workers union secretary Leonel Delgado told La Nacion that visitors’ actions had “a negative impact”.
This breed of sea turtle is already especially vulnerable to predators and other nefarious conditions, which make survival of its young precarious enough in the natural world – the last thing they need is more forces against them, threatening survival.
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Costa Rican authorities said they plan to address concerns by only permitting licensed and experienced tour guides to access the beaches in the future.
