Tag: excursions

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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Our new MEMANTA sign!
Off season

Let the fun begin!

Daniela

Slowly MEMANTA is turning into what we’ve imagined it to be over all these years. With more and more interns coming from overseas, the occasional tourist stopping by and exciting projects being realized, we are growing and improving every single month.
Here’s all the updates you need to know!

THE SEA TURTLE SEASON CAME TO AN END

Hatchery time with Olive Ridleys
Once again on their way into freedom
Lennard still got busy with the babyturtles

Even though a new year had begun, we still had quite a few nests in the hatchery – both from Olive Ridleys and Green Turtles. Fortunately there were some helping hands around, first the Berg family and then Lennard, a brave soul from northern Germany who decided to do a 3-month internship in the field of geography! Even though Lennard’s focus wasn’t sea turtles, he got trained in nest exhumations and releases. We didn’t go on any more night patrols, but that didn’t stop him from witnessing one legendary nesting event right in front of our property! He saw the turtle dragging herself out of the water, totally unexpected, in the middle of the day, when he was having his midday beach break. What a lucky guy! He immediately called us and we collected the eggs together – it was the last nest of the 2021/2022 season!

Afternoon Green turtle release
Come on little fella!
Shared moments on the beach
Continue reading “Let the fun begin!” →
Nearly full...
Turtle season

Magical moments on the beach

Daniela

Hey… it’s been quite some time. But the good news is: It’s not that there hasn’t been anything to tell. I haven’t written for so long because I just couldn’t find the time and tranquility as we’ve been so overwhelmed by this years’ turtle season. Here are all the details:

The wonders...
... of Venecia beach
Is this paradise?

The official MEMANTA hatchery is up

After two years working with a provisional hatchery that we had built close to our house, about 200 metres away from the beachfront, the time had finally come: We built a permanent, fully-closed hatchery closer to the beach that holds space for around 50 nests at a time. The hatchery is fully secured against human intruders and all kinds of animals. Also, it is shaded in order to secure favourable temperatures and avoid a female-biased sex ratio (climate change and stuff…).

Building the hatchery
Melvin prepares the first nest bags
A freshly relocated nest

Unfortunately, the hatchery soon resulted too small. Especially in late September, our hatchery became super crowded as the older nests hadn’t hatched yet while more and more were coming in! Also, we had started putting some nests in the ground, as hatcheries “usually” do it. The thing is that in this case, you have to space out the nests more (the rule of thumb says 1m) so that bacteria etc. from one nest can’t spread to the others. With bag hatcheries, you don’t have that issue and can put the bags real close to each other.

We found that the hatching success is roughly the same for both methods, but bag hatcheries do create more waste and the nests take longer to hatch as they cool down quite a bit during the night. Next season, we would like to keep working with both methods – some nests we’ll put in our iconic red bags and some we’ll put in the ground.
Needless to say… we’ll then have to double the size of our hatchery!

The hatchery...
...is filling up...
...real fast!
Nearly full...
Continue reading “Magical moments on the beach” →