Vacation In Costa Rica And Witness Arribada: The Incredible Spectacle of Olive Ridley Sea Turtles

For people who love nature a great Costa Rica ecotourism adventure is the mass sea turtle nesting called the "arribada" . It is one of the natural world's wonders.

A very long time ago, the first olive ridley marine turtles left the land to live and swim on our planet. Today, these ancient turtles are endangered, a fact that is really hard to believe because, after all, they've been swimming the oceans more than one hundred million years.

To put this into a bit of perspective, imagine terrifying Tyrannosaurus Rex. It roamed North America sixty-five million years ago and, as surely as the sun rises and sets, it feasted on these sea turtles when they came ashore to nest.

These ancient beings have flourished for impossible to imagine eons, despite being eaten by just about everything under the sun for millions of generations. Incredibly, probably 30,000,000 or more generations of marine turtles were preyed upon by dinosaurs and other reptiles and fierce ocean predators before the first Tyrannosaurus Rex stepped foot on earth and, since then, another 70,000,000 generations have suffered the same fate. Still, they flourished.

They even survived the greatest catastrophe the earth has suffered, the mass extinction that killed every mighty dinosaur on the entire planet. Sea turtles not only survived the cataclysm, they flourished.

They spread, over eons, across the face of the earth, until, these 100 pound ancient mariners were found in every temperate and tropical ocean. They were common from the Americas east to the Arabian Sea and from Pacific coast of the New World to India. Tens upon tens of millions, and maybe even more, of olive ridleys. They were without limits in number.

In 1951, the same year that Americans began to watch "I Love Lucy", the seas were still the home of millions of olive ridley turtles. Mexico's Pacific coast alone had 10,000,000 olive ridley nests when the first episode of that popular comedy aired. Each nest had about 100 eggs per clutch.

That's about a billion eggs.

A billion sea turtle eggs laid along just one coast of Mexico in just one year. And, remember, these sea turtles were found virtually everywhere there were warm or temperate waters. The numbers were limitless. So it seemed.

So many turtle eggs, so easily collected, so much money to be made. During the incredible arribadas, or nestings, massive pack trains of mules and horses carried away hundreds of millions of eggs each nesting season.

Sadly, this mindless greed was being repeated across the world.

At the same time, country-after-country, established olive ridley fisheries.

The result was that olive ridley turtles went from limitless to endangered in a few short years. A single generation of one species accomplished what had seemed impossible: almost destroying in the blink of an eye what had taken a hundred million generations to create.

Fortunately, some countries finally realized the extent of depredation and started to take steps to conserve and protect these turtles. Tiny Costa Rica helped lead the way, creating refuges and working with dedicated conservationists and their residents to not only conserve what was left but to rebuild stocks.

Ostional Beach, on Costa Rica's Pacific coast, almost certainly has world's largest arribadas of olive ridley sea turtles. The spanish word "arribada" means "arrival", a very apt description of one of nature's great phenomena. Every month, often when the moon is in its last quarter, female turtles gather close to shore for several days , then suddenly come ashore in large groups.

The largest arribadas are typically from June through November and the most massive mass nesting in recent years was 500,000 females coming ashore in 1995.

If you are interested in Costa Rica ecotourism, this is a must-see. Though olive ridley sea turtles nest on about forty beaches, the huge arribadas occur at Playa Ostional, a small beach south of the coastal town of Tamarindo and at Nancite Beach, north of Tamarindo.
About the author: Vic Krumm writes about sunny Costa Rica. Check out his very popular website Costa Rica Vacations and see why Costa Rica Tourism is world-renowned.