Articles About Panama Tours And Travel | The Leatherback Turtles of Panama
The leatherback turtle is found in many parts of the world, from Alaska to Australia. In Panama, the species goes by the name of "baula" or "canal." The largest of the marine turtles, the leatherback grows four to six feet in length and weighs between 500 and 1,500 pounds. The turtle derives its name from a leather-like ridged black shell with white dots. It lives between thirty and fifty years, longer than any other turtle species.
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More About Panama's Leatherback Turtles
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Years Of Poaching Threaten This Magnificent Creature's Existence
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That the leatherback's shell is not hard and its meat unsavory gives humans two less reasons to kill the animal, but its eggs make the slaughter worthwhile nonetheless. Due to the leatherback's unwieldy proportions, poachers start by slicing off the very long flippers to prevent escape and turn the female on her back, leaving her to die a slow death after the eggs have been taken. For years, near the mouth of Rio Changuinola on the Bocas del Toro mainland of Panama, the carcasses of between eighteen and fifty leatherbacks have been found that have met this fate. Additional hazards in the life of the leatherback are the discarded plastic bags, gobbled by mistake, because in the sea, they resemble jelly fish, the main leatherback diet. Though this magnificent species has managed to exist for a hundred million years, today it is on the verge of extinction.
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The species spends more time submerged than other marine turtle, dives deeper and migrates across oceans. It feeds just off shore and in open water. Females nest at night every ten days between March and June and are most numerous in Bocas del Toro Province, both on the mainland and in the archipelago. These Caribbean nesting sites include Isla Bastimentos in the national park of the same name and the San-San Pond Sak Wetlands. The best place in all of Panama to catch a glimpse of this critically endangered species is on remote Playa Chiriqui east of Peninsula Valiente in April or May. This is the largest nesting site in Central America and the second largest in the world. Here 3,000 to 5,000 leatherbacks nest each year. They also nest on the Pacific side, off the Azuero Peninsula in the Isla de Canas Wildlife Refuge.
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Efforts are underway throughout the world to protect the species from extinction.
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The Caribbean Conservation Corporation has been tracking the migration of leatherbacks that nest along the coast of Panama and Costa Rica since 2003 and is working to protect the important nesting site at Playa Chiriqui and the nearby off-shore Escudo de Veraguas Island. Satellite tracking devices, attached to the turtles, record their whereabouts every time they surface for air. For more information about the Caribbean Leatherback Conservation and Tracking Project, go to www.cccturtle.org.
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In neighboring Costa Rica, Leatherback Marine National Park was established in 1991 to protect two of the country's most important nesting sites, and ten years later, the government designated a protected Cocos-Baulas migratory corridor down its entire Pacific coast for the leatherback and other species. Conservationists are hopeful that the corridor will become a regional effort beyond the borders of Costa Rica.
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Perhaps the most effective marine turtle conservation program takes the form of convincing communities in the vicinity of nesting sites that more revenue can be generated by saving the turtles than slaughtering them. The World Wildlife Fund and other entities have had great success in educating communities about the benefits of eco-tourism, poaching prevention and necessary eco-tourism infrastructure improvements to attract more visitors wishing to observe leatherback turtles. In northwest Costa Rica, for instance, these efforts resulted in eliminating poaching of the leatherback altogether at the Playa Junquillal, an important unprotected nesting beach.
