Wildlife Filming – Costa Rica

Wildlife Filming…

Wildlife Filming is never predictable. They said we’d never get the shots! They said that it took the BBC a year to get their footage. We allowed ourselves a window of 10 days and didn’t really hold out any hope. But on the very first day the turtles started arriving… We had an ARRIBADA!!!

No drone filming…

We could not fly our drone on the beach. It’s too close to the local airfield. And as we were working under a permit and receiving great help from Yeimy the reserve administrator we didn’t break the rules. But I just saw this image on FB and had to share it.

And yes, these are all turtles. Olive Ridley turtles to be precise – on a beach on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.

The Arribada

Their arrival is totally unpredictable. Scientists still can’t fully explain it. It doesn’t seem to be linked to the tides nor to any specific phase of the moon. Sometimes there are tens of thousands of turtles. Sometimes as many as half a million come ashore during the 3 or 4 days that the wildlife phenomenon lasts. Then as quickly as they arrived the turtles all disappear and the beach is empty, save for a few scavenging vultures.

And this was a big arribada. Fishermen had been reporting increasingly large numbers of turtles offshore. But while arribadas usually take place between dusk and dawn, this was such a big one that the turtles started coming ashore at midday. Maybe the overcast skies encouraged them into thinking evening was coming early.

Our contact in Costa Rica was Vanessa Bezy   A scientist who has studied the turtles for many years, Vanessa had suggested that our best chances were in late September / early October. But when she called us on the morning it we arrived to tell us the arribada was starting, it was the best we could have dreamt of. Our room at the Ostional Turtle Lodge  was just five minutes from the beach, so five minutes later we were there. Capturing some awesome footage for our upcoming documentary…