by Jane Furchgott

José Urteaga telling SCP vice-president José Marroquin about the leatherback hatchery

Last November José Marroquin and I visited the MARENA (Nicaragua's DNR) station at Chacocente's sea turtle arribada (mass nesting) beach. We talked with the head guard, Paulo Flores, who told us that, in general, the turtle protection had improved.
A large pile of fishing nets filled up one corner of the porch. These were nets confiscated in Chacocente waters, waiting to be reclaimed by the fishermen who owned them. The new naval checkpoint at El Astillero is working, and the MARENA boat is making regular patrols to confiscate illegally set nets. Paolo said a checkpoint at Casares, another fishing town north of Chacocente, is also needed. These checkpoints help deter fishermen from bringing in eggs that were obtained from sea turtles killed at sea.
We asked Paulo about the rumors we had heard concerning violence at the beach during the past month. He told us the story, exemplifying the tense relations between MARENA and the local fishermen. During the October arribada, a soldier had shot a young a young egg poacher in the leg. The Astillero community got mad and chased away the ten MARENA guards and soldiers at the station, taking many of the eggs from the arribada even though they were already too old to sell. "We were way outnumbered -- we had to run", said Paulo, unapologetically. He had requested twenty soldiers for the next arribada.
Occurring during out visit, that arribada went well, with 3500 olive ridley turtles nesting on its first night. Their numbers are up a little from last year.
The government ban on taking sea turtle eggs is still in effect. A well-known egg trafficker from Chacocente's Veracruz community received a one-year jail sentence.
José and I also visited the leatherback sea turtle hatchery near Veracruz. We talked with FFI's José Urteaga, who has successfully run this hatchery for four years, working with the egg poachers in this unprotected part of the beach to find and sell him all leatherback eggs. Local people, some former egg poachers, are also hired to help protect and run the hatchery. This January the SCP gave José Urteaga money to hire a person from Veracruz to work at the hatchery for three months. Forty-five nests were saved at the hatchery this season.
Chacocente's small leatherback population is important because of the Pacific leatherback's precipitous decline in the last decade. On a hopeful note, the leatherback population in the east Pacific seems to have stabilized at the current very low numbers. José Urteaga told us that two other nesting areas, each about as large as Chacocente's, have been found in Nicaragua.