Sea Turtle Release

 We were unexpectedly delighted to learn that the resort we had chosen, Sandos Finisterra, was an active participant in sea turtle population rehabilitation. Sea turtles have less than a 1% survival rate to maturity on a good day and human impact on their environment has not helped, so efforts to improve their chances were a welcome sight.

Efforts by the resort are pretty substantial and not just feel-good as well. They have a staff biologist who gathers up buried eggs along the beach and places them in a protected enclosure where they are monitored and able to hatch in safety.

 The signs at the beach said they were Golfina turtles, which I believe are commonly known as Olive Ridley turtles in English. Every few days enough dug themselves up to the surface to be ready for a batch release into the sea and a crowd would always gather to watch the turtles head for the sea. The added bonus here is that a large crowd tends to keep away many of the birds that predate on these hatchlings and helped give them that little extra edge.

 Of course I was still not prepared for what a rough start they had to their lives. The beaches in Cabo are not swimmable due to strong rip currents and unpredictable waves so for us the area was walking-only. No such luck for these little guys as they struggled down the beach and into the surf. Most of the time a wave would come up and people would cheer, only for it to roll back having pushed half a dozen turtles 15 feet back onto the land and flipped them on their backs. Even when they did back it to the water, every large wave had dozens of little black bodies tumbling around in the chop. Not a easy lot in life.

Any turtles which were too tired or cold to make it into the water on the day were gathered up by the biologist and either warmed and released into the surf, or kept for another try on the following day depending on their state.