Tortuguero

by Pat Heyman | Nov 28, 2009 | Essays, Pat

When he first arrived in Tortuguero, Costa Rica, Tom Carr was only five. He recalls that he tagged his first turtle when just six years old. He spent three years in Tortuguero with his parents before returning to the United States to go to school. Every summer for the next eighteen years he would return to help with the turtle project.

In the old days, the Tortuguero research station worked because it was one big family with the local village. The village helped the Carr family, and the Carr family helped them. “Pana pana hancome hango,” they would say. “You help us. We help you.”

The earliest settlers of Tortuguero were black Caribs. In the early days Carib faces were the only faces around, but through the years migration has brought an ethnic mix to the Tortuguero area. As they were generally the only people who could speak English, when the tourist boom began, many moved to San Jose and some became successful hoteliers, head chefs, and front deskmen.

At first, the Tortuguero field station was run just by Archie Carr, his family, and his graduate students from the University of Florida during the summers. There was very little communication or transportation, and one of the Carr boys would go down a week early to set up camp. As time went on Archie’s students who had graduated began to take over the project.

The early days of Tortuguero were filled with adventures straight from the pages of the Swiss Family Robinson, complete with smugglers, pirates, and guerrillas. Today, Tortuguero remains a colorful, albeit calmer, town.

Adventures in Tortuguero

Life in Tortuguero was not always easy nor quiet. There were little to no supplies. There were threats from Cuba and pirates. Here is one firsthand account of an adventure at Tortuguero.

Hunting the Giant Jewfish — recounted by Tom Carr

To get fresh meat and quench my urge to fish the unknown waters of turtle bogue I would go fishing at the boca (river mouth) after my chores were done. I hooked a 400 pound Jewfish one late afternoon; I had tied the line to the largest log I could find on the sandbar at the mouth of the river. Even though he was in water only a meter deep he was able to pull me and the log slowly but surely into the sea. There were a hell of a lot of big tiger sharks out there in those days from all the turtle butchering going on.

At the last moment before the monster made it to deep water I got to my feet and ran out in to the water towards the fish using the line as my guide. As I ran I pulled a small .38 caliber derringer (a survival gun) from my back pocket, and when I reached the fish was able to shoot him twice in the head. The bullets did not enter the skull but the impact was such that that it stunned him and I was able to drag him back to shallow water. The fish was way to big for me to get him into my cayuca (canoe) so I tethered him to the gunwale and with a small outboard towed him back to Casa Verde (the Green House) where Shefton, our friend and cook, butchered him. The meat from this fish fed our team and the village for days. I was fourteen at the time.

Archie Carr: Father of Turtle Research

by Pat Heyman | Nov 28, 2009 | Essays, Pat

How it all began:

Fifty years ago, we knew next to nothing about sea turtles. If you study sea turtles today, you will notice one name popping up again and again: Dr. Archie Carr. Dr. Carr set up the first systematic turtle research program, which still operates today. He is directly responsible for saving the Caribbean green turtle population from extinction. Most of our knowledge of sea turtles stems from his research. Dr. Carr’s life was as interesting as the turtles he loved.

Archie was the son of a Presbyterian minister and spent his early years traveling throughout the south with his father. His father was a strict disciplinarian who insisted on a proper education. Fascinated by adventure fiction, Archie’s character was shaped by his heroes, the characters of Kipling, Hemingway, and Twain. With a literary bent, Archie felt drawn to write as well.

He had once read that one of his favorite authors had said that to write one had first to live hard. So Archie took it upon himself to live hard, and live hard he did. For a time, he worked the river boats of the Mississippi following in Mark Twain’s footsteps. He wound up working the docks of Savannah. One day while loading bales of cotton, one of the large needles used to sew up the bales pierced his forearm. With no penicillin, the doctors chose to remove his bone and replace it with a metal bar.

With his days of hard living at an end, Archie chose to attend college at the University of Florida, where he graduated with a double major: biology and English. Taxonomy was his specialty, and in those days, that meant going out, finding new species, and naming them. He met his wife, Marjorie, while on a trip into the field. She was studying the sex life of the St. Johns River large mouth bass at the time.

They married, and soon word of Dr. Carr’s research reached the ears of the Ivy League. Harvard asked if he had ever heard of a fellow named Popenoe. (Popenoe’s research lead to the introduction of the avocado to the United States.) If Archie would help “Pop,” Harvard would pay for him to live and do research in Honduras. The fruit companies would front the money for the project. And so Archie packed up and moved off to Honduras. He describes these as the best years of his life. He was teaching biology to bright young students in Honduras’ Zamarano School of Agriculture. He had all the time in the world to travel into the cloud forests looking for new species. His wife studied her birds. His children were born. And, the fruit companies indirectly paid for it through Harvard.

In order to go deeper into the jungles, Archie hired himself out to chicleros. (Chicleros were the collectors of chicle, from which chewing gum is made. Many chicleros were less than reputable.) So there Archie was. White American university professor, Ph.D.–gallivanting around the jungle acting as huntsman and cook for the toughest bandits in all Honduras. Life was good…until one fateful day.

October 10, 1947, Archie had taken a trip on horseback to the Pacific coast in search of new species. And there for the first time in his log, he records seeing a nesting sea turtle, “…eggs came out every 4-10 seconds in bunches of 2, 3, or 4 [few times], usually 2-3. Turtles eyes closed and plastered with tears and sand. This must be of some function.” The preliminary sketches and descriptions tickled his imagination and began a fascination with turtles that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

A good friend of his, Guillermo Cruz, told him that if he were really interested in sea turtles, then he needed to go to Costa Rica to Tortuguero. After a cursory trip in 1955, Archie and his family made the trip on horseback from Honduras to Tortuguero in Costa Rica. The leader of the expedition was none other than Pepe Figueres, the leader of Costa Rica’s revolution less than ten years earlier.

And so, Dr. Archie Carr began what has become today the longest lived turtle research project in the world–Tortuguero. And still today, the Carr family watches over the goings on in Tortuguero.

This series is dedicated in loving memory to Dr. Archie Carr. 1907 – 1987.

Sea Turtles and Archie Carr

by Pat Heyman | Nov 28, 2009 | Essays, Pat

April 1996

There is something special about seeing a huge sea turtle braving the pounding surf to nest.  Every year, thousands of people are drawn to coasts around the world in order to get a glimpse of these beautiful creatures.  Some go farther and help researchers tag and study turtles.

I first wrote these articles while working at Holbrook Travel. I was in charge of creating a website for them, but found myself in a dilemma; we had nothing to put on the website. So after careful research and several interviews, I wrote this series of articles. With the pasage of time, the articles have been removed from the Holbrook website. Perhaps it’s sentiment for my sophomore effort, or perhaps it’s professional pride, but I thought that the articles were important enough to save for posterity. They are centered around the conservation efforts to preserve the Green Sea Turtle.

So I hope that you learn something, and I hope you enjoy the articles. I look forward to hearing from you.