Sandy Turtle Beach: The hidden treasure of sea turtle rescue

Just fourteen kilometers out of town, amidst the vast mangrove jungle and along the southern beaches of the Mayan Riviera, there’s a little, hard-working slice of paradise. It’s called Sandy Turtle, and for good reason: our off-grid and eco-friendly cabin hides the serious headquarters of a large data-driven sea turtle rescue operation.

Sandy Turtle, or El Campamento, is a beautiful jungle and beach retreat just thirty meters from the ocean. Its circular design is a testament to the shelter’s mission: to reduce plastic waste and promote a more nature-friendly way of living and raise awareness of the ever-growing problems on the shoreline. Our volunteers and staff clean the beaches and monitor sea turtle activity on the nearby shores while living eco-friendly with a circular philosophy, cleaning, and recycling found plastic for art, crafts, and more.

Turtle nesting and egg hatching are becoming a near-impossible daily battle for the already endangered sea turtles of the Pacific Ocean. Two of the seven kinds of sea turtles, the green and loggerhead variants, try to lay eggs on the beaches of Mahahual but are hindered by vast amounts of plastic waste and sargassum (a rapidly growing seaweed that is constantly washing ashore). Because of the obstacles, mature sea turtles are hindered in their attempt to lay eggs - and if they succeed, the babies are then disoriented by the plastic and seaweed, and more often than not eaten before they reach freedom in the safe waters just twenty meters away.

The Sandy Turtle project is aimed at helping sea turtles safely nest, hatch, and find their way to the sea. On one hand, this involves weekly and monthly beach clean-ups, data collection of plastic quantities, and full-time monitoring of the sea turtles at dawn by in-house biologists. But this isn’t enough. The long-term solution is to reduce plastic waste and stop the dumping of nutrient-rich fertilizers in our oceans. Only then will the sea turtles of Mahahual thrive like they once did, like before the rapid decline of worldwide turtle populations.

Two of a kind
Mahahual (and the rest of the shores of Caribbean Mexico) is the home to two of the seven distinct variants of sea turtles: the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) and the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta). Both nest on the beaches of Mahahual, between April and October. Female sea turtles only nest about once every three or four years, laying several nests on sandy beaches. After digging a hole and depositing about 100-114 eggs, the females fill in the hole with sand and camouflage the nest before returning to the sea.

After the two-month incubation period, the turtle hatchlings all dig out of their nest at the same time, a process that can take several days. As a group, they then leave their nest at night and head directly for the sea. This first trek ``imprints`` their home beach into the hatchlings. Once grown, the turtles will return to lay their nests on the same beach. Only about one in 1,000 turtles survive to adulthood. Hatchlings die of dehydration if they don't make it to the ocean fast enough. Birds, crabs, and other animals also prey on the young turtles.

Both Mahahual species are listed as either endangered or threatened. The federal Endangered Species Act lists the green turtle as endangered, which means a species is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range. The loggerhead turtle is listed as threatened, which means the species is in line to become endangered in the foreseeable future. This makes it illegal to harm, harass, or kill any sea turtles, their eggs, or hatchlings in Mexico. It is also illegal to import, sell, or transport turtles or their products.

Green Sea Turtles
The green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) is a species of large sea turtle. Its range extends throughout tropical and subtropical seas around the world, with two distinct populations in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The name refers to the usually green fat around its belly, not to the color, which is olive to black. It has a pair of large, paddle-like flippers. Unlike other members of its family, it’s mostly herbivorous. The adults usually inhabit shallow lagoons, feeding mostly on various species of seagrasses by biting only the tips of the plants. This way, they keep the dense population of seaweed and grasses healthy and thriving.

Like other sea turtles, green sea turtles migrate long distances between feeding grounds and hatching beaches. Females crawl out on beaches, dig nests, and lay eggs during the night. Later, hatchlings emerge and scramble into the water. Those that reach maturity may live to 90 years in the wild.

Loggerhead Sea Turtles
The loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) is a species of oceanic turtle distributed throughout the world. The average loggerhead measures around 90 cm (35 in) when fully grown and weighs approximately 135 kg. The largest specimens can weigh more than 450 kg, nothing to scoff at! The skin ranges from yellow to brown, and the shell is typically reddish brown. No external differences in sex are seen until the turtle becomes an adult, the most obvious difference being that adult males have thicker tails.

The loggerhead sea turtle is found in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea. It spends most of its life in saltwater, with females briefly coming ashore to lay eggs. The loggerhead sea turtle has a low reproductive rate. After laying, they stop producing eggs for two to three years. The loggerhead reaches sexual maturity within 17–33 years and has a lifespan of 47–67 years. The loggerhead sea turtle is omnivorous. Its large and powerful jaws serve as a kind of nutcracker for mollusks, snails, and other small creatures.

An obstacle course
Let’s say you’re a female sea turtle. No, really! Get into it. You’ve got a shell, a nice set of flippers and you’re actually pretty chill all around. And what’s more, you’ve got this huge urge to make a nest.
So, you swim to your habitual beach, the same one you were born in. And not only you but your mother, your father, your grandparents… everyone. Now your children will be born on the same beach. But, as you drag yourself out of the rolling waves, you come eye-to-eye with an unforeseen problem: huge heaps of seaweed littered with plastic bottles, diesel containers, flipflops, and even a few car parts, separating you and the white sand like an obstacle course.

Hundreds of turtles are facing this every time they try to lay their eggs. Because of the growing seaweed and plastic on the beaches of the Mexican Caribbean, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to find clear patches of beach to dig a nest in. And even if they succeed, their children aren’t nearly as resilient as their parents. Already, the chance of making it to the sea is one in a thousand, but the mounds of plastic and seaweed make it impossible for the small turtles to escape the clutches of birds, crabs, and other animals.

Sargasso on the shores
Since 2011, the Caribbean shores of Mexico have become plagued by an ever-growing mound of sargassum, a drifting seaweed that’s thriving due to climate change and the dumping of fertilizing chemicals in our oceans. Every year between April and October, the sargassum is a nasty, unwelcome guest on our shores, which not only stops locals and tourists from enjoying our beaches but worst of all: stops turtles from nesting.

Data-driven clean-ups
We’re Mexico’s first plastic clean-up operation that utilizes data! Why? Because we’d like to understand - and show - the depth and reach of the problem. We’ve partnered up with multiple organizations and professors from around the globe (even Japan!) to participate in the worldwide effort to battle the ever-increasing stream of plastic. By working this way, we’ve found all kinds of interesting tidbits: which kinds of plastics show up the most, where these plastics originate from - and even which popular brands show up the most often.

Our method of working involves timed and measured clean-ups. For instance, depending on the number of volunteers showing up, we can choose a duration of 50 or 100 minutes, for either 50-100 meters of beach. We segment our found plastics into different groups, like PET, HDPE, glass, shoes and flip flops, rope, synthetic fibers, or waste. Afterward, we weigh the total amount of plastic collected, and each segment individually. The plastics are then cleaned, separated, and stored in our storage facility. Everything reusable is crushed into smaller pellets and chucks. These chucks and bits are then recycled into arts, crafts, and longer-life products.

Because we’re vigorously collecting data, we’re already able to determine trends, make estimates about the amounts of weight that washes up to shore on a weekly and monthly basis and we are helping researchers further their study on plastic pollution, contaminants, the direction of sea currents and much, much more!

The Great Nurdle Hunt
We’ve partnered up with Fidra to partake in The Great Nurdle Hunt, a worldwide effort to collect nurdles - small microplastic pellets that form the basis of other plastic objects. Due to spills, oversight, and manufacturing plants, they’ve begun appearing in our waterways, rivers, and oceans. Because they’re so small - and like all microplastics - they’re practically impossible to remove from our oceans, so we’re trying to collect as much data on them as possible. Even worse, nurdles have been shown to both absorb toxic chemicals inside them while traveling the ocean and to be great transporting vessels for all kinds of bacteria.

After every clean-up, we do ten minutes of nurdle hunting. They’re hard to spot, but it's a
necessary job and a responsibility we have to carry after producing them. You make ‘em, you find them, right? We’re hoping the global effort will wake up politicians, manufacturers, and production facilities alike, to stop this problem at the root cause.