Poking Turtles in Baja

March 23rd, 2013 • BY

The sea turtle was pissed. She was caught in a net that we had strung across an estuary a few hours before and, hissing and snapping, was clearly not pleased. But after Nolberto hoisted her into the bottom of the boat and sped off to our small beachy islet in the waxing light of morning, she started to calm.
 
This is just another workday for Grupo Tortuguero, a group of reformed turtle poachers based in Magdalena Bay off the central Pacific coast of Baja. We weren’t there to snag some luscious turtle meat. On the contrary. The group is devoted to helping endangered black sea turtles by weighing, measuring, and tagging them. The data they gather goes to organizations like NOAA, ultimately providing researchers and legislators with science to help guide conservation policies. At the same time, volunteers’ fees help defray the costs of the project and bring income to an area once rife with poaching—proving to locals that turtles are worth more in the water than in the soup bowl.
 
But a three-day volunteering stint with Grupo Tortuguero—arranged through a sustainable tourism company called Red Sustainable Travel ($650)—isn’t exactly all heavy lifting. I stayed in a tent on a small island ringed with sand. I watched dolphins swim past while eating local oysters and fresh homemade salsa. I inspected coyote tracks in the desert and watched the Pacific crash onto a wide, empty beach. Oh, and after I weighed and measured the turtle, I watched her scramble down the beach and disappear in a moment, back to her home.

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Kate Siber

About

Kate Siber has worked as a pastry cook, a small-time farmer, a ski-rental tech, and a thankless-accounting drone, among other distinctive vocations, but the career she tried on and kept was writing. For the last eight years, Siber, a freelance writer and correspondent for Outside magazine, has traipsed the globe in search of stories, shooting blowguns with Amazonian tribes in Ecuador, tracking rhinos in South Africa, and diving with— More about this author →