The young olive ridley sea turtle was only 15 years old as she drifted 500 yards offshore in the warm, tropical eastern Pacific ocean off Ostional Beach in a small country that, more than 500 years earlier, Christopher Columbus had discovered and named "Costa Rica", the "rich coast."
The afternoon October rains had slipped away as she waited expectantly. In its final quarter now, the moon was having an unseen effect upon her.
A dozen yards away, a second olive ridley sea turtle joined her, followed by a dozen, then hundreds, thousands, and soon tens of thousands, all waiting quietly. For epochs the moon has silently passed its timeless phases that affect the world's tides-and today it was bringing her ashore this night, just as it had led her forebears to ancestral nesting beaches for more than 100,000,000 years.
There is something mysterious about nature. A few months earlier, this marine turtle and the multitude of sea turtles now alongside her were scattered across the Pacific Ocean, some more than 2500 miles away.
Even though there was lots of food, something more powerful had begun to stir within her and hundreds of thousands more of her kind. Whatever it was, they all felt the same timeless need to return to Ostional Beach. You see, it was at Ostional that they first had been given life.
Now, months after something inside spoke to her, she waited in the soft light just a few hundred meters from her destination. She had swum so very far but now the silent voice within her told her to wait. She was ready. Over the many weeks and thousands of miles she had swum she had come across many different male olive ridley sea turtles in the blue tropical ocean waters and she had mated with several because, like her, they too were being affected by something unseen, a force as old as life itself. Whatever it was, it was so compelling that her kind had been going back to the same Costa Rica beach since before the first dinosaur.
This olive ridley sea turtle was somehow returning to the very beach where had hatched in 1995. No one knows how a Pacific marine turtle finds the exact beach where she started life. Ostional Beach is only a few hundred meters long. Now part of Costa Rica's Ostional National Wildlife Refuge, it is probably the most important olive ridley marine turtle nesting site on earth. Incredibly, the year this turtle hatched, perhaps 500,000 females had nested here in massive "arribadas."
Unfortunately, our sea turtle's mother will not join her to nest at Ostional this year even though for the last two decades, she had been part of massive Costa Rica arribadas annually. Not long ago, she drowned in an illegal shrimping net on her way back to the ancient nesting grounds. It was a needless waste since it could have been avoided by the simple use of an internationally required, but typically ignored, law requiring a turtle escape device. Thousands more were destroyed in what is politely called "incidental catch" by long line fishermen who refuse to use larger hooks that would prevent tragedy to this ancient creature. And, no one knows how many thousands died unnecessarily by swallowing carelessly discarded plastic bags. And, of course, there has been the ceaseless pillaging of nests: millions of eggs from just a few small, precious beaches.
Of course, the tens of thousands of olive ridleys just offshore know none of this. As we look out over the water in the pale moonlight, there are now so many that it almost seems one could walk on their backs for a mile or more. We stand in awe at the sheer magnitude of God's creation. They don't know or comprehend that they were on this planet long before the first Tyrannosaurus Rex. They don't know that we are waiting for them to come ashore so that when they lay their eggs on this tiny wildlife refuge, men, women, and children will lawfully raid their nests and take 1,000,000 eggs in return for protecting the rest of the clutches and preserving the species. They only know that this is where they are meant to be.
Then, though no one knows why, it happens. As quietly as they first appeared, as silently as they gathered, their patience has been rewarded and they begin to come ashore. A single olive ridley turtle followed by a second. Then there are hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands---even more than that---each intent on one task: bringing new life. All night they come. And all day, day after day. It is a wonder of magnificent Costa Rica and as timeless as the phases of the moon. It is the spectacular display of life called Arribada.
About the Author:
Victor C. Krumm writes about tropical Costa Rica in his popular website Costa Rica Vacations. Visit here to discover more about magnificent Costa Rica attractions Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory
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