Sea turtles in Mexico looking to nest find more tourists than sand
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20050105-9999-lz1...
By S. Lynne Walker
January 5, 2005
CANCUN, Mexico ? On Canc?n's moonlit beach, a dark figure weaves past palapas and plastic chairs. It lurches forward, stops, then lurches forward
again, intent on a private, nocturnal mission.
Against a backdrop of glitzy hotels, a green turtle searches for a safe place to lay her eggs, just as sea turtles have been doing here for millions
of years.
But the turtles are at the center of an economic tug-of-war that pits man against one of nature's most majestic sea creatures. And the gentle giants
are losing the battle.
Seven species of sea turtles lumber onto Mexico's beaches each year to lay millions of eggs. No country in the world has more species of marine
turtles visit its shores.
Yet all of them are in danger of extinction, threatened by poachers who kill them for turtle meat and eggs, or by an ever-growing tourism industry
that disrupts their nesting sites.
In Mexico, where 7,000 miles of mostly undeveloped coastline hold the promise of attracting billions of tourist dollars, the interests of mega-tourism
development and nature collide.
"We are torn between developing our coasts and protecting our species of turtles," said biologist Lilia Estrada, who heads the wildlife conservation
department in Mexico's Environmental Ministry.
Nowhere is the contrast more stark than in Canc?n, where hotel development threatens four species of sea turtles.
Just 30 years ago, Canc?n was a strip of jungle lapped by a turquoise Caribbean Sea. Maya Indians who harvested chicle for a living shared the tiny
patch of virgin land with crocodiles, tarantulas and iguanas.
Now Mexico's top tourist destination, Canc?n attracts 3 million visitors a year.
Sunburned tourists jump for volleyballs on the beaches where female turtles bury their eggs. At night, when turtles make landfall to dig their nests,
tractors rumble along the beaches compressing the sand.
The 400-pound turtles heave themselves onto the beaches, passing chairs stacked so high that they are in constant peril of tipping over. Floodlights
beaming from hotels onto the white sand confuse the turtles, whose vision is limited to fragments of light and shadow.
"We have seen turtles swimming back and forth in the ocean because they don't like the way the light reflects off the beach," said biologist Luis
Ortiz, who supervises Canc?n's marine turtle conservation program. "There are people. There are beach chairs. It makes things difficult for the
turtles."
Despite the obstacles, four species of turtles ? loggerhead, leatherback, hawksbill and green ? keep returning to Canc?n's beaches to nest.
"You would think they would go to solitary beaches," Ortiz said. "But other beaches that are completely isolated have fewer turtles than we have
here."
With the turtles determined to share the coast with the tourists who come here each year, the city asked Canc?n's 93 beach hotels to help protect the
marine animals and their eggs during the May-to-September nesting season.
Canc?n is one of only a handful of cities in Mexico with a sea turtle conservation program, but funding is so limited that most of the costs are
covered by donations.
Although local and state politicians court public opinion by expressing an interest in saving the turtles, they have failed to come up with the money
for a serious conservation program.
"They go to publicized events and release turtles into the sea to show their interest in conservation," Ortiz said. "Sometimes it's true and sometimes
it's just politics ? like kissing babies."
To strengthen the under-funded program, the city's ecology department suggested that security personnel at Canc?n's hotels guard the nesting turtles.
The city proposed that night security guards collect the eggs laid by the turtles and put them in an incubator.
Ortiz and other biologists offered to train the hotel workers. And after dark, the biologists promised to walk the beaches and respond to requests for
assistance from the hotels.
"The turtles arrive at night, so the hotels don't need a lot of workers handing out towels or serving people. At that hour, tourists are sleeping,"
said Arturo Mosso, the city's director of ecology, who received his bachelor's degree in oceanography from the Autonomous University of Baja
California in Ensenada. "To put one or two people on the beach, compared to the cost they charge for the rooms, should not be onerous."
But the hotel industry's response has been tepid.
"It has taken a lot of work to get them to support the program," Mosso said. "Hoteliers are not charitable. Money kills the ecological spirit."
Beach lights
Mosso runs down a long list of Canc?n hotels that have balked at the city's three-year-old turtle conservation program. On that list is the Sheraton
Canc?n, a huge resort hotel that flooded the beach at night with harsh light at the onset of the 2004 nesting season.
Federal environmental officials went to the Sheraton three times while the lights were on and collected turtle eggs lifeguards had buried in a corral
constructed by the hotel on the beach.
Eduardo Ballesteros, the hotel's quality control supervisor, insisted the Sheraton was helping protect endangered sea turtles. But he said the hotel's
first obligation is to take care of guests, particularly those who swim in the ocean after dark.
He defended the hotel's decision to turn its floodlights on the beach, noting that the start of the nesting season coincided with summer break.
"We couldn't turn the lights off because the students swim in the ocean. It's dangerous," Ballesteros said.
Once summer break ended, the Sheraton turned off its lights.
"Everybody here is conscious that you have to take care of nature," Ballesteros said.
But even if every one of Canc?n's hotels was committed to caring for the turtles, the nesting sites of the giant sea animals would still be threatened
by hotel construction.
"We have to make authorities understand that there can be no more construction along the coast," said Araceli Dominguez, president of the Mayab
Ecological Group in Canc?n.
The Royal Sands, which opened five years ago, has set an example for participation in the turtle conservation program, Ortiz said.
Hotel security guards collected turtle eggs from nearly 150 nests in 2004, making it the single most important site on Canc?n's beaches.
"Sometimes we have five or six or seven turtles a night," said security guard Victor Medina, who patrols nearly a mile of beach stretching along the
hotel's property in search of female turtles.
"We count the eggs. We measure the turtle and identify her species. Then we watch over her until she returns to the sea," he said. "We are proud to do
this work because we know it is important."
Daniel Pardenilla, night manager at the Royal Sands, said there are "very few hotels in Canc?n that are giving the necessary support to the program.
But we are 100 percent involved.
"Throughout their existence the turtles have been arriving on these beaches. This is their place. We are the intruders here," Pardenilla said. "This
is their habitat. We have to respect it."
86 degrees
Scientists believe female turtles swim hundreds, if not thousands of miles to reach Canc?n's beaches and nest in the place where they were born.
They are graceful swimmers, with streamlined bodies and flipper-like limbs. Their speed in the water ? their only defense against predators ? can top
1? miles per hour.
They are legendary for their sexual prowess. A pair of turtles can copulate up to 10 days in the open sea, sparking the myth among poachers that
turtle eggs are a powerful aphrodisiac.
The world population of breeding female green turtles is estimated at 203,000, but no one is certain how many arrive in Canc?n each year. They are the
most abundant of the turtles nesting there, but their migratory lifestyle makes them almost impossible to count. Tallying the number of nests can be
misleading because one female turtle lays eggs up to five times during the nesting season.
Canc?n's residents have become accustomed to seeing the humped backs of sea turtles bobbing in the gulf just before the nesting season begins.
Once they reach shore, Ortiz spends his nights following wide tracks from the ocean to the sand dunes, tracks that tell him a turtle has recently come
out of the water.
It is during the two hours female turtles spend making a nest and laying their eggs that they are most vulnerable to illegal poaching.
Oritz scans the horizon until he spots the silhouette of a sea turtle wending along the beach in search of a circle of sand with a temperature of
about 86 degrees.
With her fore flippers, the female turtle sweeps away the sand to create a hollow where she can nestle her body. Then, she uses her hind flippers to
dig a 20-inch-deep hole below her tail where she deposits her eggs.
Under normal circumstances, the female turtle buries the eggs and heads out to sea. But on Canc?n's beaches, that's the moment when Ortiz, or the
hotel security guards he has trained, step in.
They gently scoop up the eggs and place them in buckets. At some hotels the eggs are buried in corrals on the beach. Others bury them in ice chests
filled with sand that are stored in the hotel basements for the 40-to 50-day incubation period.
Every now and then, a turtle lays her eggs without being observed by Ortiz or the security guards. Two months later, tiny turtles pop through the
sand's surface and onto the beach, to the delight of sunbathers.
As tourist resorts encroach on the beaches, however, there is tragedy in this miracle of nature.
"If they don't find a good place to lay eggs and they can't wait any longer, they release their eggs in the sea," Ortiz said. "Canc?n has a high
number of failures because of the development on the beaches."
Even if female turtles successfully nest on land, the odds are bad for their offspring, he said. Fewer than 1 percent of the turtles hatched from
those eggs will live to adulthood.
Release celebration
Survival of sea turtles in Mexico's Caribbean waters may depend on convincing Canc?n's hotels that protecting them is good for business.
Newborn turtles could become an ecological attraction, drawing visitors from around the world, Mosso said.
"Tourists see this and have this experience of living with nature, so the ones who really benefit are the hoteliers," he said. "They should be the
ones who are the most interested in preserving these programs."
At the end of the 2004 nesting season, the Sheraton invited guests to participate in a torch-lit ceremony releasing the tiny animals that hatched in
the hotel's corral into the sea.
"For many of them, it is an experience they will never have again," said Ballesteros.
Maria Seale, who traveled from London to vacation in Canc?n, stood barefoot at the water's edge with a two-day-old green turtle in her hands.
The turtle waved its flippers in a swimming motion, ready for life in the ocean to begin.
Seale bent down and gently placed her tiny turtle on the sand, then smiled as it paddled toward the sea.
She lifted her hand and waved.
"Good luck!" she said.
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