A Slothful Weekend

It was a slow weekend—good for things like sloths, tortugas (turtles), and manatees.  And, indeed, we saw them all, at least a little.  We took a weekend excursion with other Habla Ya students to San San Pond Sak wetlands, where we visited the research and tortuga protection programs being carried on there by AAMVECONA http://www.aamvecona.com/en/index.php?p=1.  On Saturday morning, after taking taxis from the school to the dock, 11 of us boarded a water taxi for the 25 minute ride from Bocas del Toro to Almirante.  There a bus was waiting to take us 24 kilometers up the coast toward Costa Rica past the town of Changuinola, home of the Panama Baseball League 2012 champions Los Tortugueras (The Turtle Men) of Bocas Del Toro. We stopped at the San San River bridge, and there we boarded a wooden launch to motor about 45 minutes down river to the camp on a narrow peninsula between the river and the Caribbean Sea.  En route we encountered some heavy rain, so much of our stuff was wet when we arrived.  My once shiny Panama Birds book now looks worn and formerly wet.

Our rustic accommodations did include a comfortable double bed, with mosquito netting, in a private room, so it was really just right.  The shower was downstairs and cold, but in the intense heat and humidity it was a pleasure to take any kind of shower.

When it stopped raining, we started exploring.  And napping.  While I napped, Peggy found a sloth—I think it was a three-toed sloth, but don’t know for sure.  She woke me up and we went together to look at it.  The hike was about 50 meters.  While we were looking at Peggy’s sloth, I found two others.  They all were completely motionless.  They looked like messy balls of wet hair stuck to the tree branches.  Beyond that we really couldn’t see anything else, except on one of them we could clearly see some toes.  So I guess that settles it—we saw three toed sloths.

One of the featured highlights of this weekend trip was the hope of seeing giant leatherback turtles, the tortugas for which this spot is famous.  A female will lay her eggs on the beach nearby, and about 60 to 63 days later, they all hatch and the babies emerge at the same time.  As many as 60 or 70 dig out from the sand nest within just a few minutes.  Except here there is a lot of human intervention in the name of science and protection of this vulnerable species.  During breeding season, from about February to August, teams of workers (los tortugueras) patrol a 5 kilometer stretch of the beach looking for female turtles and the nests where they deposit their eggs.  The eggs are all collected, moved to fenced enclosure near the research center, and reburied in the sand in a man-made nest of the same dimensions as the female’s natural nest.  Dozens of these relocated nests are in the fenced enclosure where a small wire and bug-netting canopy is placed over each nest.  Here a person and a dog named Mike keep constant vigil over the hundreds of precious tortuga eggs, protecting them from predators both wild and human.  We were told we would have a chance to see both an egg-laying female and the hatching of a nest full of eggs, if we were lucky.  The plan was to look for both after dinner.

But at dusk, before it was even time for dinner, we got word that there was a hatching underway.  So we trotted down to the beach were we saw two people catching the little tortugas as they escaped the nest.  Each was placed in a wheel barrow that was teaming with 3 inch long tortugas trying to scramble out with their little flipper/legs.  They asked us each to put on a surgical glove, and then they let us help pick up the little rascals and put them in the wheel barrow.  I (and others) managed to snap off a couple of photos before they said no flash photography—it might disorient the little guys.  When the workers were confident that all the babies had been collected and no more were coming out of the nest, they wheeled the barrow about 100 meters down the beach and then, one by one, we put the tortugas on the sand and watched as they scurried to the water’s edge.  They carefully counted as each was released.  My tortuga was a strong little guy, number 8, who immediately headed to the water.   Peggy helped a set of twins, 18 and 19, get on their way.  If they make it, the females from this brood will come back to the same beach in about 20 or 25 years to lay their own eggs in the same sand.  It was a moving experience to hold the little tortugas and help them start their dangerous life-long journey in the sea.  It’s so dangerous that the workers waited until all the babies had made it into the water, preventing unseen predators from getting them before they made the first short walk to the sea.

After that excitement we had dinner and by then it was about 9 PM, time to go on the beach patrol looking for a female laying eggs.   No lights, they explained, and it would be about a 4 kilometer walk one-way with another 4 kilometers back.  So off we went, walking the beach in the dark with no moonlight to guide us.  Although we all stumbled over something sometime, amazingly no one got hurt.  We all just got really tired.  By the time we got back to the camp, it was after midnight, and we had not seen a single tortuga on the beach.  Sometimes that happens, they explained, especially now as the nesting season is starting to wane.  So hot, tired, and disappointed, we all went to bed, only to be aroused minutes later by the cry “la tortuga!”  A female had been spotted about 2 or 3 hundred meters from camp, but in the other direction on the beach.  So we all got up and out again, hopeful and cheerful.  But when we got to the site just a few minutes later, the tortuga was gone.  The workers were looking for the nest, so we stayed to at least see the recovery of the fresh eggs.  They explained the tortuguas will lay the eggs in the nest, and then create several false nests to try to deceive any predators who may be looking for the tasty eggs.  To find the nest one experienced worker used a metal rod about 3 or 4 feet long to probe into the sand where the tortuga had disturbed it.  They explained that the probe slides easily into the looser sand of the nest, and rarely do they damage an egg looking for the nest this way.  Nevertheless, one time the man with the probe pulled it out of the sand, and then felt the tip of the probe and smelled it, suggesting that sometimes they do puncture an egg.  Tonight, however, they found nothing.  Sometimes that happens, they said.  The tortuga may get disturbed and leave before the eggs are laid. 

So, disappointed again, we trudged, very tired, back to our rooms.  I didn’t have the energy to look at the clock, but I guessed it was about 1 AM when we climbed back in bed, me first, then Peggy.  Peggy had barely pulled up the sheet when another cry came, “la tortuga!”  Peggy was out of bed in a flash, but me—“I can’t go out,” I said.  “I’m beat.”  So I slept.

When Peggy got to the nest, again not far from camp, the tortuga had already finished laying the eggs. But she was still there.  Peggy said it was enormous, with a very large head and bulging vitrous eyes that appeared to be crying.  The workers allowed her to touch the soft leathery eggs that had already been placed in a plastic bag for transport to the nursery.  They measure not only the mother tortuga, but also the size and depth of the nest so they can replicate those dimensions back at the nursery.  They record not only the date and number of eggs, but also the exact location of each nest.  Sometimes they get a 60% hatch rate, beating an average hatch rate of about 40% in natural nests.

I managed to wake enough to ask Peggy about it when she returned at who knows when.  I think I remember her answering before I fell back asleep again.

The next day we went out in a small boat into the mangrove swamp near the river’s mouth, not far from camp.  We managed to find a few birds, though seeing them in the dense leaves of the swamp was difficult.  While doing this, I spotted a manatee surface not far away.  Neither Peggy nor the boatman saw the manatee, but we could all see the surface of the water ripple as the manatee swam under the surface closer and closer to us, finally passing within just a few feet of the boat before continuing out of sight into the distance. 

As for the birds, we found these 4 new ones:  Collared Plover, Black-cowled Oriole, Olive-backed Euphonia (we heard lots of these singing before we finally saw one), and Blue Ground-Dove.  Got quite a few bug bites, too.

Exhausted, we are now back at home and eager to get more sleep.  It was a really great trip.