I have been in Costa Rica for eight days. It has been so much fun! On our last day out in the water we caught four green sea turtles. We caught one after the other. It was so exciting. I made sure to help out as much as I could. Most of them weren’t tagged. On our last day we went on a hike. It was downhill all the way to a beautiful waterfall. The hike back up the hill was difficult. I know I will be feeling the workout tomorrow.

This has been my fourth day in Costa Rica. I have spent one day traveling and two days catching sea turtle. The last day was spent planting mangrove trees. These trees are located in the sand near the tide. It is where the green sea turtles find food. It also gives housing to sea creatures that the hawksbill will eat. We had to first pick seeds off the trees. They were pretty high up so we needed to use poles to knock them down. We picked about seventy. Next we had to take trees that have been growing for about seven months and plant them in the sand. This was a lot of work! Shoveling in the sandy rocks is not easy. We also had to measure the plants and how far they were from the tide and other mangroves. We then planted out seeds in the soil. It is a great feeling to know that there will be a mangrove tree growing in Costa Rica that I planted!

This trip to Costa Rica has been amazing so far! I have been here for two days. We are staying in the Osa Peninsula, which is on the southern border of the country. This is where two endangered sea turtle species live, the green sea turtle and the hawksbill. We have spent the past two days catching these sea turtles. We arrive at the station at 8:00 am. We have to take a twenty minutes bike ride to get there. We get up early but it is worth it! Once we get there we load all the supplies onto the boat and travel ten minutes to a beach. We then set out the nets. Once they are set out in the water we need to untangle them. There is 200 meters of this net. We then wait on the beach until a turtle gets caught. When it gets caught it is brought ashore. It takes about five or six people to carry the turtle to the sand. We need to quickly measure the biometrics, check for tags, and record the data. If there are not any tags we need to tag both left and right front flippers and take a tissue sample. This is to study the genetics on these sea turtles. There is a lot of waiting, but once we catch a turtle it is so exciting to see these amazing creatures. I can’t wait to see more!