Windsor teens in Costa Rica to help fight turtle extinction
June 27, 2009
When Emily Beardmore first heard that a trip was being planned by the advanced placement biology class at Windsor High School, she thought about how much fun it would be.
“I thought it would be a really good experience to go with other friends and teachers to another country in an environment other than a vacation environment,” the 17-year-old said.
A few months later, Emily got her chance when she and 14 of her classmates, along with advanced placement biology teacher Tamara Pennington and chemistry teacher Glenn Peterson, went to Costa Rica for eight days in late May.
The trip was part of a program through the Eco Teach Foundation, which is an organization that supports conservation of endangered species and responsible resource management in Costa Rica.
Pennington learned about the program while she was at a science convention in Denver. It was something she knew she wanted her students to participate in from the time she talked to the organizers.
“It was not just a tour,” said Pennington, who organized the trip. “You can go any place in the world on just a tour. This one was hands on, really working with the sea turtles and practicing conservation. It just seemed like the perfect science field trip for kids who think they want to get into science to see what it’s really like to be out in the field and immerse yourself.”
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While in Costa Rica, the teens – most of whom were either AP biology students or preparing to become AP biology students – helped rescue eggs from leatherback turtles on the coast, spent time with indigenous tribes, visited a school, zip-lined across a rain forest and visited an organic farm.
Emily said her time on the turtle project, which was the focus of the trip, was “crazy.”
“We were walking on the beach at night and you can’t see anything – just see a big black dot,” she said with a laugh. “I was not expecting the turtles to be that big.”
The turtles are leatherback turtles, which are becoming extinct because their eggs are poached for use as aphrodisiacs and food.
During nesting season, the turtle comes onto the beach and digs a large hole where she lays from 100 to 120 eggs. The students would wait until the turtle was done digging the hole. Then, two students would each grab one fin to keep them out of the way while a third student would collect the eggs in a bag.
“When they would flex their legs while laying their eggs they were really hard to control because they were a lot more powerful than you would imagine,” Emily said.
Once the eggs were collected, the students took them back to a hatchery and dug holes to replicate the hole the mother turtle had made and then buried the eggs for the 60 days needed to hatch.
Students also got to witness some of the earlier hatchlings emerge while they were there.
“We were really lucky because this time of year you still have the end of the season laying turtles, but the turtles that came early in the season, their babies are hatching,” Pennington said. “When the hatchlings come out, they collect them all because they don’t like to let them go to the sea until night, so predators don’t see them, so they collect all the hatchlings and weigh them and take some data, and then at night we let them go back into the sea.”
Both Emily and Jasmine Aas, also an incoming senior who attended the trip, agreed, saying it was something they would do again, something that made them appreciate what they have and something they would recommend to future students.
“It was an amazing experience,” Emily said. “You go to another country to see what their culture is like and learn what their everyday lives were like. It made me really want to help out my mom a lot more than I do, and appreciate what I have.”
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