Can turtle tourism keep a species afloat?

With my Cancun vacation over I find myself sun soaked and delightfully exhausted. However, there is one thing that I seem to be completely unable to stop thinking about. How is it possible for there to be hundreds of sea turtle nests on one of the most populated tourist hot spots in Mexico? As I boarded the plane ready to leave, I couldn’t help think about all the turtle nests that were mere inches away from me on my beach chair. Is this ok? Are these nests actually going to hatch into successful turtles that will enter the ocean? Is turtle tourism a thing that can help keep this species afloat?

On the left several sea turtle nests and tracks can be seen on a stretch of protected beach in Playita Tortuga in Tulum. This beach is closed during nesting season. On the right, a marked sea turtle nest on a stretch of private beach club land. This beach is open year round and the turtle nests are marked with a stick and the date of nesting. I am assuming the nests are registered somewhere but I was not able to find information on the numbers of nests in this particular area. This particular nest was almost under the lounge chair I was sitting on. The beach club was not crowded and everyone seemed to give the nests space and try not to walk on them. Several parents were keeping their kids off the nests and no one seemed to disturb them while I was there. I am really curious as to the success of these nests in a populated area so I decided to dive into some of the data available on the mexico.

I am particularly interested in this topic because I want to believe that humans and sea turtles can coexist. I desperatley want to believe that people want sea turtles to survive so they will do their best not to disturb nests in a public beach. But there is one huge problem (or not??) Mexico has a lot of coastline. Not only do they have a lot, its a commodity, they sell coastline like its a cash crop. They sell it to hotels to build huge resorts, they sell it to tourists to come and stay, and they sell it to wealthy landowners to build beach villas and air bnb’s. Managing that coastline for something like a turtle nesting season is an enormous task that is nearly impossible without the help of private citizens and hotel owners. Luckily “saving the turtles” is trending. I cant go a week in Austin without seeing someone with a t-shirt that says “save the turtles.” Its difficult to find a restaurant (aside from some fast food places, looking at you Chick Fil A) that still have plastic straws. In Cancun I never got a single straw with any drink I ordered, even in an off resort local restaurant. I had trouble locating a plastic bag for my wet clothes, and had to BUY one at a store because there were so few in the city. Efforts to curb common sea turtle maladies are well underway, but what about one of the most critical ways to save the species, protecting the next generation?

Get to know your Carribean and Gulf Sea turtles

The most endangered of all the sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico are the Kemp’s Ridley. They were once hunted or rather “gathered” (because turtles don’t really run away) to near extinction for their colorful shell. Their eggs are also supposedly really tasty but pretty much no one alive today could tell you what they taste like. Efforts to rebound the species have been very unsuccessful and this year Florida only saw a handful of Kemps Ridley nests in the whole state.

The most common turtle we saw in Mexico was the green sea turtle. I was not able to snap a photo of one so here is a really realistic photo of me with a green sea turtle.

Did I mention I went scuba diving? It was awesome

Sea turtles are wildly popular in Mexico with tourists. If anyone spots a turtle people huddle around them to hear the whole recounting of the event. It goes something like this “yea I was snorkeling and it just swam by, it was amazing.” Hotels know this is popular and have been doing anything and everything to promote turtle tourism, but what about eggs? I squealed like a little kid when I saw a turtle nest but they are rather….meh to look at. Can nest sites bring in tourists or are they just another piece of wildlife for drunk Americans to trip over in the night?

I am going to compile some of the internet data I can find of the Hotel zone in Cancun. This area is a densely populated stretch of beach with hotels managing waterfront zones. It reminds me of the beach version of the Las Vegas strip. The turtle monitoring and tagging process began in this area sometime around 1999 (??) though I have been unable to find an exact date of when it began. Hotels in this zone will move nests from one area of the beach to another protected beach area with a “corral or fence” around it.

corral photo credit: Rivera maya news

The movement and protection of nests in Mexico seem to be plagued with funding issues across the country. However, in places where tourism thrives there seems to be a drive and funds to continue projects. A similar program like the one at the hotel zone was underway in 2003 (source) in Jalisco, and was very successful. These efforts can be low cost and involve the community in a way that more intensive programs do not. I struggled to find scientific articles with data showing sea turtle nests, but I collected some information from various news sources. All of the sources I looked at described a notable increase in nests over the past 5 years, as protection for the turtles has increased. The Pronatura Península de Yucatán environmental organization manages 210 km of coastline and noted 31,218 turtle nests this year. Those numbers seem amazing but in reality we don’t have a lot of data of what turtle numbers were before human impact. Florida has a robust data collection program that began in 1979 and has seen a huge increase in turtle nests since then. Hopefully Mexico will follow suit and begin to show and report more data.

I think people are hesitant to report too much good news when it comes to conservation. Especially with turtles facing so many threats on the ocean, nesting, plastic, and habitat loss. People in general tend to stop caring about a cause the moment success has been reported. I think its important to remember that the species almost went extinct, so its easy to have a positive growth when the number was almost zero.

graph here—- feel free to stop reading if you aren’t a graph person

A 2010 research study by Centro para la Protección y Conservación de Tortugas El Cuyo, source, seems to show an increase since 1990, looking good for now. lets hope this trend continues.