American Expatriate Costa Rica

NatGeo highlights turtles’ spectacular journey towards Ostional

National Geographic magazine shared a video that shows the large number of turtles that are headed to spawn at Ostional Beach in Guanacaste. The images were captured with a drone by the biologist Vanessa Bézy in November 2016. She has been documenting the arrival of turtles for many years.

She told the magazine that this phenomenon is impressive and that she had never seen it.

To this day I am still impressed by the video. They look like bumper cars out there. It is an enigmatic natural phenomenon. We don’t know how turtles coordinate this and why,”

said the specialist.

Although it was recorded three years ago, Bézy wanted to share it in order to make a call to take care of nature.

Turtles are increasingly threatened by the increasing number of tourists, who can cram the beaches at critical times and, potentially hurt their development. The video helps show how unique this place is, and that it needs to be protected,”

says the publication.

The video is going around the world and many experts have studied it, including Roldan Valverde, a Florida-based Turtle Conservancy scientist, and a biologist at Southeastern Louisiana University.

This is the only time I have seen a video that captures this phenomenon in the water. Most of the photography that documents this happens on the beach,”

added Valverde.

The expert is studying the turtles to determine why they meet in Ostional, if it has to do with the orientation of the beach, the sea currents or the type of sand.

crhoy.com