In July of 2021 Ms Maggio had the opportunity to travel to the Pacuare Reserve, established in 1989, which is situated on Costa Rica's Caribbean Coast. I went as a teacher fellow through the Ecology Project International (EPI) fellowship program. Since 2015 EPI has been the steward of the almost 2,000 acres of tropical forest and coastline, which is home to one of the most important beaches for Leatherback Sea Turtle nesting.
I took a prop plane in order to meet the teacher team I would be working with for the next week! The plane was so small that they had to weigh the passengers as well as our bags!
Our first stop was the EPI Education Center about a 2.5 hours from the reserve. We reviewed the schedule for the week, got to know each other a bit and enjoyed our last night of cool weather, and hot(ish) showers before we headed to the rainforest.
We woke early and had some breakfast, loaded up the van with our bags and headed to the preserve. It was a lovely drive through the Costa Rican countryside from San Rafael to the Caribbean coast. The last 30 minutes of the drive was through banana farms. You can see the banana trees in the picture above left and below. The blue bags are covering the one bunch of bananas that grow from each tree as protection from bugs and other animals! If you look closely you can see the trees grow in threes.
"The trees are in threes, a mother, a daughter and a grandmother tree. The mother tree is the tree that has reached maturity and is able to produce a bunch. The daughter tree obviously has not reached maturity. The grandmother tree has already produced her bunch.
So why keep them all together? Their roots are all connected. The grandmother tree is not cut down because she helps provide nutrients to the mother and daughter tree." (Thanks for taking such good notes Chandra Dunbar!! Photo Credit above Tess Carlson)
The long bus ride ended at the edge of a river. We next loaded our bags and ourselves into these small boats for a thirty minute ride through the canals surrounding the Preserve.
I was a BIG fan of the porch outside my dorm building (which also had bats sleeping on the wall above the door to my room every day!) I took advantage of that hammock whenever we had down time.
Research at Pacuare Preserve focuses on sea turtle nesting and conservation. The female leatherback comes up to the beach at night, and if she finds a spot she likes she will dig a hole and deposit her eggs. The Research assistants on the preserve walk the 6 miles of the beach every night, looking for females in order to collect the eggs AS THEY ARE BEING LAID! If we were going to help with this data collection we needed some training.
Our training began on the beach, the research assistants traced a sea turtle in the sand and we built them up with sand in order to simulate a female laying her eggs. Once the females find a location they like they use their back fins to scoop away sand and create a hole. During this time it is important to keep your distance so that you don't scare the female back into the water. Once the hole is completed the female goes into a kind of trance as she is about to lay her eggs and that is when the research assistants and the teaching fellows jump to action. The fellow take the measurements of the shell, which is what were practicing in the picture on the upper right. While we are doing that the Research Assistants go behind the female with a large mesh bag, place the bag below the cloaca and catch the eggs as they are lain into the bag. They need to remove the bag as soon as the female is finished, as she will fill in the empty hole believing the eggs are still there and return to the sea.
The eggs are collected to protect them from predators and poachers. The eggs are transferred to a new nest in the nursery (images above) where they are monitored daily by the research assistants. Most nights the fellows were split into 2 groups - one to walk the beach in search of females and one group to monitor the nursery for nests that may have hatched. Because we were there late in the season we didn't see any females laying their eggs. But my group did get to see a hatched nest!
At dusk, the research assistants release the turtles as you can see in the video above. It is not exactly a direct route, and the waves don't make it easy on them either! The work on the Pacuare Reserve is ensuring that as many of the leatherback turtles as possible find their way to the ocean, and hopefully one day make it back to that beach to reproduce themselves.
In addition to protecting the Leatherback nesting beaches, Pacuare Reserve is also home to nesting sites of the Agami heron a reclusive, rarely seen heron of humid tropical lowlands. We were lucky enough to be able to hike to and visit one of their nesting areas on the reserve. Adult agami have a plumage that is dark overall, with a beautiful silvery spray of lacy neck plumes while immature birds are browner overall, without the neck plumes.
Some other amazing species I saw while on the preserve and our tours
TOUCAN! In real life!
Land Crab - there was a field of these, as we walked by they would all scramble into their holes! LOL
SLOTH!!!!
Red Poison Frog
Touch Me Not - Mimosa sleepy plant
Insect that died due to infection of the Zombie Fugus Cordyceps!! So COOL!
I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to spend this week learning about and surrounded by so much beauty and wonder. I want to say thanks to all of my fellow teachers who inspired me every day to not only think about all of the ways I could bring this experience into my classroom but also reminded me how to enjoy just being in the moment and the joy of new experiences (as long as it is not a hike in the rain). And a HUGE thanks to our team leaders Anita and Carlos - your enthusiasm for teaching was contagious and your knowledge of the local ecosystems made every moment engaging.
