A Bath and A Release

Friday, August 31^st

Today, one of the volunteers and I “sewed” the circular cages for the hatchlings. They are basically rolls of wire meshing that we put over each nest so that when the nest hatches there aren’t hatchlings running all over the place. We cut the rolls into the right size and then used string to tie them up. After we finished the cages, we decided to give Paco a bath. He has fleas and is super smelly! Unfortunately, he hates baths. It took 4 volunteers to hold him down, scrub him, get water, etc. Then as soon as we were done, he rolled around in the dirt. DOGS!!

Our new, colorful hatchling cages 

 

Later in the afternoon, I went fishing with Willi and Mariachi. Since we were going to the mangroves, we decided to release the boa that a man had brought to the park days earlier. Willi and I had to carry the boa to the mangroves in a bucket. It was kind of scary because it kept trying to jump out. I thought it was going to rip through the netting we had over the top. I was happy for multiple reasons when we finally let it go. The rest of the time was spent fishing. I was able to convince Mariachi and Willi to not take as many fish this time. The past few times, they have fed the alligator gar too many of these fish and most of the little fish end up starving because the gar can’t eat them fast enough. 

 The boa slithering off into the mangroves

ANOTHER Found Turtle

Thursday, August 30^th

Today on crawl counts I found ANOTHER turtle! Apparently, I’m lucky in the mornings. It was annoying though because 3 dogs joined a volunteer and I on the walk and they were barking at the turtle, wanting to play with it, etc. It was hard to hold them back and dig the tunnel to her nest. Luckily, my favorite morning parlamero saw us and helped hold the dogs back. The nest had 112 eggs! Right now I’m personally responsible for over 300 eggs and it feels good!

During the day, Megan and Ryan worked on hatchery. They renovate houses back home, so they have a ton of experience fixing stuff up. They are doing a super good job. I’m so thankful that they decided to come here and stay for a little while! While they were fixing the small hatchery, I put more palms on the big hatchery. It was getting too warm in some places and Willi and Mariachi didn’t want to do it themselves, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and climb up. We were able to get about a quarter of it done. We still have a ways to go unfortunately.

The hatchery about half-way finished

In the afternoon, I went to Alice’s sea turtle identification workshop for the local fisherman. It was interesting to see how these fishermen responded to the new information. The president of the Fishing Association was asking intelligent questions and seemed pretty interested. She wanted to put on the workshop in order to have them start collecting data for her. I’m curious to see if they are able to put their new skills to use. I also helped a volunteer start making thank you posters to the parlameros that have donated more than 12 eggs. I’m hoping recognition will be an incentive for donating more eggs. We are going to put them up in all the schools and tiendas. I’m excited to see what the reaction will be!

The signs read "Thank you very much for your donations of more than 12 eggs! (followed by the names of the parlameros)"

Tonight was a weird patrol night! First of all, it was raining super hard! Second of all, some parlameros lied to us and said they only had 41 eggs in their nest. However, we saw them pull out a lot more. I’ve thought about it and thought about it and I can’t see what they gained by lying to us. Later in the night, we came up two guys who had found a turtle. They said they would give us a donation, so we waited 45 minutes for the turtle to lay. When it came time to give us the eggs, they said they were splitting the nest so they were only going to give us 6 eggs. I tried asking them for 6 eggs each, but they refused. I was super mad for the rest of the walk back to the park and soaked to top it off.

Overseeing

Wednesday, August 29^th

The kids came again today, but like yesterday Angela pretty much took care of them, so I spent the day overseeing the volunteers. The back areas of the park are like a wilderness area, so some of the volunteers weeded and cleaned up that area. I was amazed at how good it looked! It was like walking into a well tended garden instead of a jungle! The guy volunteers worked on some shelves for the volunteer dorms and they turned out great. It will be nice for the volunteers to finally have a place to put their stuff.

Later on in the afternoon, Megan and Ryan (two volunteers from Australia) came up with a plan to fix the small hatchery so that we can use it while we are waiting for money to start building the new hatchery. They have started working already and I can tell that it is going to look great! As is, the hatchery is insecure and almost unusable, so anything they can do to help would be amazing. 

I also had my Spanish lesson with Alice in the afternoon. She helped me come up with a way to sweet talk my fisherman friend, Abalino, into raising more money to buy eggs. Apparently he did a great job last year, so I’m hoping to convince him to this year as well. One of the volunteers, Lynn, wove Paco a new collar. It looks great! He looks like he is really our dog now. He is starting to get used to wearing a collar to, which is good. 

Paco showing off his new handmade collar

Invasion of the Local Kids

Tuesday, August 28^th

This morning and afternoon, we had a local school group come to the parque to learn about the mangroves, so we cleaned up the parque for their arrival. We got a lot of raking, sweeping, and random clean up stuff done. Luckily, Angela ran the education program. I don’t think my Spanish is anywhere near good enough to discuss environmental education with young kids. It was really cool to see the kids interested in learning about the environment! This is the generation that can help stop the bad practices of their parents and grandparents. 

After the kids left, we spent the afternoon lounging around and resting to get ready for a potentially big turtle night again. And a big turtle night it was! I got 3 beach donations and saw two turtles! I even was able to convince one parlamero to give more eggs. Sometimes it’s nice to be a girl…laying on the charm and asking for “Uno huevo mas por favor” really seems to work with some of these guys. I can’t believe how busy it has been on the beach the past couple nights. I used to do patrols and not even see tracks and now I’m almost guaranteed to see a turtle. It really is peak turtle season!

Paco

Monday, August 27^th

Like I said there would be....there were tons of nests this morning, which meant tons of donations coming in that needed to be buried. I think we buried a couple hundred eggs at least. The rest of the morning I spent talking to Colum about stuff around the parque. Later in the day, we sanded pieces of wood to make a new table for the office. We also organized the patrol kits again and sorted all the towels and sheets.

Glenda and I also made the important decision of adopting the dog that has been hanging around the parque. We’ve tried scaring him away and leaving him places, but he just keeps coming back. Part of the reason we didn’t want him here is because he would come on patrols and bark at turtles. This either makes them go back in the water or pisses off parlameros…neither is a good thing. He also tried to grab a hatchling from my hand. However, we discovered that we can leave him in the office while on patrols and he is perfectly happy. 

  

He is so skinny that both of us felt awful for not feeding him, so we decided to adopt him if he won’t leave. We named him Paco and put a collar on him. Alejandro, the vet for ARCAS, is coming down later this week and will examine him and give him some flea medication. We are going to start training him soon too. He is a super sweet dog and now that I’ve been feeding him, he has already started following me around.

Paco sitting on the side of the road

Two new volunteers came today, so I took one of them with me on patrol. It was a great night for turtles! Fay raised money back home to buy nests from the parlameros, so she gave me some money for the patrol. The parque usually buys eggs when the price is lower, but she wanted all of her money used before she leaves in a few days. After walking about 15 minutes, the volunteer and I spotted some tracks and a parlamero standing by them with a big bag of eggs. We got the donation and then bought the rest of the nest for 14Q instead of the going 15Q rate. We walked awhile farther and then turned around to bury the nest. As we were walking back, we ran into the same parlamero who was in the process of getting eggs from a turtle who had just laid. We got another donation, and then bought 3 dozen eggs with the rest of the money. We kept walking then found ANOTHER parlamero with a turtle. She was still in the process of digging, so we waited for about 20 minutes and then got another donation. By the time we got back to the parque, it had started raining, so we quickly buried the ~150 eggs. It was a late night, but so worth it!