Leatherback season is underway on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica - and after anxiously waiting since last July, I managed to go on patrol with our new i-to-i volunteers a few nights ago.....
Considering the beach has eroded incredible amounts since last year (a disturbing reminder of climate change), the leatherbacks are starting to appear nightly to lay their eggs.
This incredible creature has been on the planet for hundreds of millions of years virtually unchanged by evolution - and is now on the CITES critically endangered list. This means that over 80% of the population has been depleted in the last 20 years.
After just one hour of walking the beach, I spotted the tell tale tracks of this enormous turtle (she can be up to 2 metres long!)
I carefully approached her, leaving the volunteers nervously waiting to see if they would get the chance to work with the largest of all species of sea turtle.
She was still looking for a spot to start digging her nest - so we took a seat on the black sand, and quietly waited for her to make up her mind.
Eventually, amidst much grunting and sighing, she makes a body pit with her huge front flippers, scraping away the surface layer of dry sand to reach the more stable moist sand underneath. This is our sign that she is ready to start digging her nest - that will reach nearly a metre in depth.
Using her incredibly flexible back flippers she alternates digging out large quantities of sand, making a perfect long hole with a boot shape in the bottom. This whole process takes approximately half an hour - and meantime we prepare ourselves for taking the data we need. We note her position on the beach, the tide line, the vegetation line and the weather.
When she is ready to start laying her eggs, I get an excited volunteer to lay behind the turtle, and put a large plastic bag into the hole she has dug as her nest. This way we can catch the eggs before they hit the sand, and relocate them to a purpose built hatchery on the beach.
The egg laying process starts, each egg sliding out into the bag that the volunteer is holding. As the turtle starts laying, she also starts crying (to protect her eyes from the sand) and enters an egg trance.
Another volunteer helps me to scan the turtle for signs of a micro chip - a safe alternative to tagging - which is put into every nesting females meaty shoulder. This is expensive equpiment , and not every project has resources available.
The turtle is also checked for older, external metal tags, which are found on her back flippers.
The clutch of eggs collected number at 72 fertile eggs, then as usual, a smaller clutch of infertile eggs are laid on top.
All eggs are collected, and after measuring the dimensions of the nest, we take the eggs to the hatchery to recreate the natural nest, and put the eggs in for incubation.
Meanwhile, other volunteers are gently measuring the turtles shell - this one measures 1 metre 71cm! We also check her shell and flippers for any signs of injuries, disease or crustaceans, before letting her refill her "nest".
She takes her time, and with much effort starts her slow crawl back to the ocean - she will return in approximately 2 weeks, to lay another clutch of eggs, and will do this up to 5 times per season.
This whole proces has taken nearly one and a half hours.... and in this time I dont think I have heard one word whispered from the volunteers mouths.......

• leatherback turtle
• costa rica
• conservation
• turtle conservation