Sea Turtles

MIAMI – Tens of thousands of endangered sea turtles die every year in the United States when they are inadvertently snared in shrimp nets, an environmental group alleged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday against the government.

PLAYA OSTIONAL, Guanacaste – By 7 p.m., it is already impossibly dark to read the signs on buildings. Every 100 meters or so, a singular yellow street lamp illuminates a small, dim area of the dirt road. The road is bumpy and it is dangerously difficult to see the dips and holes from dried tire marks in the mud.

PLAYA OSTIONAL, Guanacaste – Annual rainfall has decreased by 52 percent this year in the Guanacaste region, according to the National Meteorological Institute, affecting the hatching rates of turtles in Ostional, a mass nesting site on Costa Rica's Pacific coast for the olive ridley species.

Police arrested two men suspected of killing an endangered green sea turtle in Parismina, a fishing village on the northern Caribbean coast, on Tuesday. Law enforcement officials found the two men in a boat with a gutted mother turtle who appears to have been in the process of laying her eggs.

One normal migration for turtles, one giant discovery for humankind. With his 14-day journey from the waters of Costa Rica’s Cocos Island National Park to the Galapagos Marine Reserve in Ecuador, “Sanjay,” an endangered green sea turtle, established the first direct migration link between the two protected areas.

Hundreds of thousands of Olive Ridley sea turtles have begun their annual decent on Playa Ostional on Costa Rica's Pacific Coast. Officials from the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC) confirmed that the nesting season officially kicked off Sunday with the season's first mass nesting event, known locally as an arribada.

Police patrolling the beach near Moín, Limón, arrested two brothers for turtle egg poaching on Thursday.

Every year, from late February through July, leatherback sea turtles haul themselves onto Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast to lay their eggs, and every year, egg poachers are there to greet them.

The population of the nearly extinct Eastern Pacific green sea turtle will likely be severely affected by the recent mass deaths, according to biologists. Longline fishing and a mass dynamiting are suspected killers.