Tag: baby turtles

Turtle season

Challenges, Changes and Chances – What happened in 2023

Daniela

Simply the fact that it’s 10 pm and I’m sitting at home in front of my laptop instead of working in the hatchery or walking on the beach shows that the sea turtle nesting season has come to an end – again.

Now it’s time to show you what we saw, felt, did and experienced over the past few months – in pictures who hopefully speak a thousand words each.

As I covered the months January and February in my previous blog post already, I’ll start with…

march

Let’s start our post with some doggo cuteness overload. We received a new family member: Gulasch! He was so shy, calm and sweet at the beginning. A little baby to melt your heart. Who would have thought he would turn into the freaking crazy daredevil he is today…

  • Baby Gulasch
  • Güllllliiiiii
  • so sweet and innocent
  • he was such a baby!
  • cutiepie

Another great thing that happened in March was our volcano trip – halfway up the San Cristobal volcano (Nicaraguas highest volcano btw) and then up the Casitas volcano where we were rewarded with spectacular views. This was our well-deserved mini adventure holiday before I had my surgery in April.

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Preparation & Construction

Ain’t no time to take a break

Daniela

We’ve got some eventful months behind us!

  • We released the last hatchlings into the sea and got a pretty good success rate
  • We’ve had our first visitors testing the camping area and leaving mesmerized
  • We started the construction of our volunteer cabin
  • We discovered some new destinations for future adventure trips
  • I received my permanent residency for Nicaragua

So here are all the details:

 

MEMANTAs first hatchery season is over

I think we can be very proud of our 84% hatching success, given that anything above 70% is considered good for a hatchery and anything above 90% is rarely seen (but of course not impossible).
Even under natural conditions, IF the nests remain totally undisturbed by humans or predators, the success rates can result quite low – this can be due to varying factors like
the health of the mother turtle, unfavourable temperatures, weather extremes, inundation and erosion etc.
Given the fact that all nests on our beach get poached, it is totally necessary to transfer them into an enclosed hatchery. And even when it seems that we failed sometimes – our first nest had only a 50% success rate and another one had a very high hatchling mortality – we can be happy about every single turtle that made its way to the sea.
I don’t think I exaggerate if I say:
Playa Venecia has seen its first baby turtles in decades!

Continue reading “Ain’t no time to take a break” →