Turtle season

Highlights, Mysteries & First Times – What happened in 2024

It has been few weeks only since we shut down the 2024/25 MEMANTA season. So it is time to tell you guys about all the amazing things that have happened.
I can certainly say that this has been our most successful and most expensive sea turtle season so far. Details will follow shortly…

Buckle up, grab your drink, lean back and keep reading… 📖

A new Hatchery… again

Once again it was time to expand our hatchery, even if it was just for a mere 2 metres. But we re-did the whole thing:
(1) We buried a black plastic fence around 40 cm deep all around the hatchery which is sturdier and more durable than the mesh,
(2) We renewed all the posts and even the wooden door as termites and rain had basically destroyed the former ones.

The new hatchery was built in mid July with the help of our first interns, Kim and Fiona from Luxembourg! These were our first guests ever from this small country and they were truly wonderful people who enjoyed themselves very much I think 🙂

Continue reading “Highlights, Mysteries & First Times – What happened in 2024”
Turtle season

A sea turtle season to remember

A lot has happened since the last blog post. And I mean A LOT. So where to begin? I’ll probably try to tell our story about the 2022 turtle nesting season in chronological order, even though I might forget a few things.

Let’s start with July!

Earlier in June, Melvin and me decided to double the size of the hatchery as we prepared ourselves for Hawksbill nesting season (this species starts to nest sooner than all the others). Remember: The Eastern Pacific Hawksbill turtle prefers to nest on the small beaches in the Padre Ramos estuary which we don’t patrol ourselves, so we only buy a small portion of the nests while the big majority goes to the other turtle project called “Casa Carey” – those guys have been around for several years already and specialize on the protection of the critically endangered Hawksbills.
Our very first Hawksbill nest was delivered to us on the 2nd of July, and altogether we incubated 17 nests of this species.

Also in July, we received our first intern for the season: Tammy from China who is studying biology in the UK and found out about us through her university. Tammy was super passionate about nature photography and birds, while she had never worked with turtles before. Having lived in big cities for all her life, she was astonished by the clear night sky full of (shooting) stars, and a little bit frightened by all the critters and mammals living on our property. With Tammy, we started going on night patrols and also had some very first encounters with our beloved Olive Ridley turtle – we buried the first nest of this species on the 29th of July.

Continue reading “A sea turtle season to remember”