Corazalito Beach had been recommended to me as a beautiful spot and since I hadn’t been there yet, I thought it might be the perfect place to go for a short run. It was already 3:30 but the beach was only 7km away and so I would have plenty of light if I didn’t dawdle on the way over (I only stopped to take pictures of three birds on the way). I could see from the moment I pulled up that the beach was lovely: wide and flat with dramatic headlands at both ends and I was the only one there. As soon as I got out of the truck however, I noticed some activity. To my left were at least three coatamundies running around and a half dozen black vultures skulking about on the ground and in the trees. Since coatamundies are usually quite skittish, I was surprised that they let me come closer with my camera without running away. They were digging in the sand and climbing in and out of a rather deep hole, and it was only on the viewfinder of my camera, that I understood what they were doing when one emerged with a round white object in its mouth. It was a turtle egg and before I could even react, it was eaten. I waved my arms and rushed them scattering all of the animals and not caring at all that I was interfering with the cycle of life.
It was right then that I noticed several more vultures just down the beach to my left where two other coatis had been. They were poking there scaly heads in a hole and as I got closer I saw to my horror that one had not an egg in its beak but a small body of turtle that it flew off with as I ran towards them now. The hole held several empty papery eggshells but also a few intact eggs at the bottom which looked to be fine. As I carefully started to cover them up again I realized they were little charcoal colored turtles in the sand that I was trying to replace. They were tiny and still curled up in a ball shape. Worse, was that as I looked sadly at their perfectly formed bodies, one breathed. They were alive. I didn’t know what to do but they still had some yolk attached to their bellies and it seemed like they had a day or so to finish maturing. They weren’t moving, just breathing and it became clear that they would not survive. I gently nestled them together and covered them up with more sand.
It was stupid, but I yelled at the ugly vultures and the formerly cute coatamundis. I know that they needed to eat, but it just seemed such a waste, so cruel—these tiny infants, not even born, were just another meal for the predators.
I decided at least to get my run in, I needed to get something positive out of this horrible scene that had left me in tears. As I ran down the beautiful beach, backed by tropical flowers and swaying palms, all I saw, up and down the beach, were more black bodies: vultures, caracaras, and black hawks in clusters and gangs at the high tide line. It became clear that they could sense or hear the hatchlings digging out and were just waiting for them to emerge. I had assumed that only the coatis were capable of digging them up but then I saw to my astonishment a caracara using both of his feet to dig in the sand too. As I approached the first group a hawk took off with a wiggling turtle in its beak.
I’m glad the beach was deserted, because I’m sure I looked like a crazy women running around throwing sticks at all of the birds while I headed down the beach. There were bunches now hanging out lower on the beach, waiting to pick off any babies that might make it out on to the smooth tidal sand. Knowing that the birds would return as soon as I passed I looped back, throwing anything I could pick up and heading back to where the hawk took the hatchling. I slowed down and to my surprise and delight saw a single live turtle finning its way across the sand, somehow missed by the dozens of eyes trained on the beach. What a privilege it was to scoop that baby up and walk it down past the scowling birds to the water’s edge. I put it down above the water line so it could make its own way into the sea but there was no chance that a bird was coming close to me—they were convinced by now that I was something to stay away from.
It’s hard to express just how moving it felt to watch that little creature march down to water. The first wavelets barely reached it and gently lifted it, already swimming, and then left it again on the wet sand, still crawling to the water’s edge. The third wave picked it up, and then it was gone.
I called to it, not even feeling foolish, “Good luck, you’ll be okay!”
When I went back to where I found the turtle, some of the birds had retreated to the trees above the beach, but they were still watching. I found another turtle and then the source! A small depression was spewing tiny turtles; six in various states of emergence. I grabbed them all before the birds could and took them down to the water, delighting in their cuteness. The sea took them too, but slowly, gently and almost like a welcoming gesture the warm waves scooped them up and took them away one by one, into the sunset.
By now the moon, round and full, was rising from behind the mountains and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. It was clear that I needed to protect and save all of the turtles on this beach, but how? It was getting dark fast. I remembered Hank putting a light in the truck saying he always liked to have one along, so I went back and got it hoping he wouldn’t mind me using up all of the batteries for such a good cause. When I got back to the main nesting site, I found another explosion of turtles from the sand, twelve this time, just coming up and out. It seemed as if the birds had gone with the fading light and there were no other predators around so I sat next to the nest and watched. This is what happened: each hatchling had to claw its way up through the sand and then up the out of the depression. Once on the level, each one turned around several times, both directions, slowly spinning as if taking bearings. I am happy to report that in spite of the brightly glowing moon to the east, each one eventually stopped turning and headed directly downslope to the ocean. Once they started, they stopped to rest but did not waver in their straight line to the sea. The distance seemed endless, even in the absence of obvious predators because it was a falling tide and these beaches on the west coast of Costa Rica are incredibly flat. I estimate their progress on the smooth wet sand was about 8 feet a minute. Sometimes as I watched, it seemed that the water was continuing to retreat, and maybe the tide was going lower still, but eventually the two met, a land born turtle and the endless, beckoning sea.
I needed to get back home. As I walked back towards the truck through the shallows, I came across another hatchling. It looked like a little moving rock on the beach. Then I saw another and another. I lost count. Satisfied and exhausted, I headed towards where the truck was nestled in the trees and just before I turned I saw something ahead on the beach, glistening in the moonlight. As I walked towards this large smooth shape it sighed and I and realized that it was a female turtle, emerged from the sea and heading up to lay her eggs on the beach.
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