Southeastern Louisiana University

Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation in Costa Rica

Page will be updated as information becomes available. Keep checking back!

 Visit the turtles in 2010....contact Dr. Roldan Valverde in the Biology Department of find out where! 

This course is open to all undergraduate and graduate students from all majors.  You will receive Biology credits for this course. 

The only pre-requisite is 4 hours of Biology Courses.

The Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation course will be taught at two of the most important sea turtle nesting beaches in the world, Tortuguero National Park and Ostional Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica.

The Tortuguero nesting colony is the largest Green Sea turtle assemblage in the Atlantic and one of the largest in the world with about 16,000 annual nesters. Tortuguero is located on the Caribbean coast surrounded by luscious Tropical Rain forest.

Click here for more information about Tortuguero!

The Ostional rookery is on the Pacific coast and constitutes the second largest nesting site for the Olive Ridley sea turtle in the world, where turtles nest en masse in discrete nesting events that take place once a month. These events may include as many as 80,000 nesting females and is one the most impressive examples of biological group activity in nature.

Click here for more information about Ostional Wildlife Refuge!

The course will give students a chance to work closely with these endangered species, which are ancient reptiles that have roamed the earth since the time of the dinosaurs.

Click here for a great site about Costa Rica's national parks!

Abstract below from:

College of Science and Technology
Interdepartmental Seminar Series
Fall 2008
All seminars are in Meade Hall 112
All talks are at 3:30pm.

21 November

Title: “Sex in the beach: a tale of sea turtle biology and conservation”
Dr. Roldán Valverde, Department of Biological Sciences

Sea turtles have roamed the earth since the age of the dinosaurs. However, these ancient reptiles are notorious for being currently endangered. In spite of their conservation status few tools are available to monitor the health of the various populations. The development of the monitoring tools and the implementation of the appropriate conservation measures are complicated by the biology of these animals, particularly by their migratory nature. Given logistic constraints regarding these two aspects most studies have focused on the nesting ecology of the different populations. This presentation will focus on our efforts and challenges to generate a global estimate of the number of “arribada” olive ridley nesting females. During the presentation I will discuss the methodology and results to date, as well as the overall essence of our international collaborative project, which involves colleagues and institutions from around the world.
 

 To see more about Costa Rica:

www.tourism.co.cr/