Turtles!

Turtle Conservation Program

Even though Wildlife Reserve La Flor beach is the official “landing” of the large Olive Ridley turtles, Playa Hermosa also receives many turtle visitors. Olive Ridley turtles weigh about 45 kilograms and have nesting sites in Asia and Africa as well as Central America. Even with this widespread habitat, this grand turtle is endangered and facing extinction in many areas. Nicaragua has a fairly large population but the destruction of nesting sites and egg robberies are taking their toll. Playa Hermosa Beach Hotel is proud to announce that they have implemented their own conservation program to save these turtles!

Playa Hermosa Beach Hotel Takes a Stand

Most areas of Nicaragua have problems with egg poachers. Even though the sale of turtle eggs is illegal in most parts of the country, the black market is alive and well and unfortunately, restaurants all over the country still serve the eggs. After several attempts were made to stop the poachers, the owners of Playa Hermosa Beach Hotel decided to use a different strategy. Rather than treating the thieves as thieves, they basically gave them the job of harvesting the turtle eggs and paid them a good sum to give the eggs to the hotel. The staff then puts the eggs in holes in a fenced-in and guarded hatchery where the baby turtles have all the time they need to hatch and grow.

The Turtle Season

The turtle hatching season ranges from July through January. Thousands of turtles find their way to several beaches along the Nicaraguan coast. Scientists believe that these sea turtles return to the beach where they were born.

Each turtle crawls slowly up the sand to find the ideal place to spawn. There she begins to remove the sand with her four legs and then uses her hind legs in a circular motion to dig a hole in the sand. Once the hole reaches a certain depth, the turtle begins to deposit about 100 eggs. When finished, the mother turtle covers the nest with sand and puts even more sand over it to try to hide the location of the nest. Finally, she returns slowly back to the sea.  

Once the hatchlings emerge, they make their instinctive walk to the sea, a walk filled with many dangers, as many predators are waiting for these tiny creatures:  gulls and other birds, crabs, and even certain fish once they reach the water. They say that on a beach where thousands of turtles hatch, only a few dozen actually survive the trip to the sea and make it to adulthood. On beaches like Hermosa, where the turtles do not arrive en masse in the thousands, we must take extra precautions to assure that these tiny creatures have a good chance of surviving once they reach the sea.

You are welcome to visit our hatchling center and see what we are doing to help preserve this great reptile. Perhaps you will be lucky enough to be staying here while a nest hatches…a wondrous site to see!