“We were flabbergasted,” said Gaos, who had hoped to find just one hawksbill so he could tell colleagues and donors about it. “Ten blew our minds. Before that, we thought there was a good possibility we would end up writing a paper saying there were no hawksbills left. This early discovery really solidified our desire to form the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative and to become the centralized hub for hawksbill data in this part of the world.”
In 2008, Gaos presented his hawksbill findings at an international sea turtle symposium in Loreto, Mexico. He had more questions than answers: Why did he only find juveniles in the gulf? Where were the nesting spots? He still can’t answer the first question, but he has solved the second one.
An inexperienced researcher from El Salvador showed up at the same meeting and said he had come across 80 hawksbill nests. Seminoff and Gaos were still buzzing with excitement when they returned to San Diego. There, Seminoff received an email from a scientist in Ecuador asking for identification tags to use on hawksbills.
A skeptical Seminoff balked and asked for photos. He soon got those images, which confirmed the presence of hawksbills and helped cement the need for the nonprofit initiative.
“It wasn’t just a guy and his wife, but it became all these representatives saying they would provide information,” Gaos said.
The series of field reports prompted Gaos and Seminoff to visit Central America, where another surprise awaited them: The hawksbills were nesting in mangrove estuaries that resemble overgrown riverbanks more than the broad, sandy beaches where sea turtles nest worldwide. That helped explain why the creatures had evaded detection by scientists for so long.
Gaos, Yañez, Seminoff and several others published their findings in August in the Biology Letters journal. In evolutionary terms, they said, the mangrove nesting could be a recent adaptation and the turtles there could be a unique branch of hawksbills.
Gaos’ conservation projects include paying locals to protect the eggs instead of gathering them for food, a tactic that helps both animals and residents. “They know the turtles better than anyone,” he said. “If they are not on our team, we are not going to get a fraction of the eggs that are laid.”
Eggs brought to conservationists are incubated in protected areas.
Gaos also is trying to establish an eco-tourism industry in which visitors pay for the chance to work with the turtles in their native habitat, and improve land conservation safeguards. The overall initiative runs on about $100,000 this year, an impressive sum just four years after Gaos and Yañez started looking for answers.
“(Gaos) went from sort of a junior biologist to a monster fundraiser,” Seminoff said. “He’s an absolute rock star. … It’s as if these discoveries were just waiting to happen and they needed the right person to be ready for discovery by the greater scientific community.”
While the accolades grow, Gaos said he’ll continue working every conceivable angle to secure more protections through habitat reserves, government support and help from villagers. “What we need to do in the next five years is consolidate these projects so that they are going to be around for years to come,” he said.