Download and ShareCayo Largo is a small island in the Canarreos Archipelago, approximately 80 miles from the main island of Cuba. There are no permanent residents of Cayo Largo - hotel and resort workers live on nearby Isla de la Juventud or the mainland. Even the sea turtles, so dependent on the white sand beaches of Playa Sirena, visit Cayo Largo just once a year. Three species of sea turtle return to their birthplaces on Cayo Largo between April and September each year: the hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata), the loggerhead (Caretta caretta), and the green turtle (chelonia mydas). The green turtle population is the largest turtle population on the island.
The life of a green turtle is simple, but not easy. Cuba’s turtles hatch on the beach, and dodge a variety of predators from the land and air as they make their way to the Atlantic Ocean. Those hatchlings that make it to the sea spend as long as five years living in the open ocean, far from the shore. As the turtles mature, they return to coastal areas, seeking out shallow, grassy waters. Adult turtles will move even further inland, preferring inshore bays, lagoons, and shoals. Many turtles will find one favorite spot, and travel only between that location and Playa Sirena for their entire lives.
Female green turtles return to the waters surrounding the nesting grounds at Cayo Largo once every two to four years; males make the trip every year in search of potential mates. Once the male and female turtles mate in the water, the females climbs on to the beach to create a nest in which to lay her eggs. Forty-five to seventy-five days later, the eggs will hatch and the cycle begins anew.
Cayo Largo is the most important reproduction site for green turtles in all of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, it is extremely important to preserve the beach conditions at Playa Sirena. Threats to the beach include increased tourism and increased land development, both of which would reduce the amount of available land and increase the amount of artificial light, which is particularly detrimental to the adult turtles and the hatchlings.
Illegal hunting and poaching are also threatening Cuba’s sea turtle population. Both domestically and internationally turtle meat, eggs, and shells are considered to be specialty items capable of bringing in large amounts of money on the black market. Laws have been in place for several years banning the international trade of turtle products, and Cuba banned all harvesting of sea turtles and their eggs in 2008. Conservationists and sea turtle hatcheries on Cayo Largo are working to preserve the hawksbill, loggerhead, and green turtle populations.
NARRATOR: And a green turtle who spends her year feeding in Florida makes this illicit crossing every summer.
NARRATOR: She’s heading to Cayo Largo, a tiny spit of limestone and sand 50 miles south of Cuba’s main island.
NARRATOR: But it’s not the sun and surf that attract her. Her mission must wait until nightfall.
NARRATOR: The conditions are perfect – it’s quiet and pitch black. But she has chosen this beach for another reason: it’s the very beach where she was born. In one of nature’s great feats of navigation, she has traveled hundreds of miles to Cuba for a single hour of work.
NARRATOR: She creates a cavity, deep enough to protect her fragile cargo from the elements. Finally, she is ready.
NARRATOR: For about 20 minutes, she is in a near ecstatic state… releasing up to 200 eggs into the sand.
NARRATOR: When she’s finished, she buries her precious payload and drags herself back out to sea. She leaves her hatchlings with a one in a thousand chance of survival. And she has no idea what her beach has become.
FERNANDO BRETOS: Sea turtles are very, very susceptible to development. It’s probably the number one threat. They’re so dependent on beaches, clean beaches, beaches free of pollution, free of lighting… and once the pressure to develop these beaches picks up, that’s going to come at the expense of some very, very healthy sea turtle nesting habitat.
NARRATOR: Even on Cayo Largo, the beaches are beginning to show the effects of tourism… and pollution is just one of the dangers the turtles face.
NARRATOR: In Cuba, sea turtle eggs are a delicacy. Enterprising Cubans hunt for nests and dig up the eggs to sell on the black market.
NARRATOR: Fortunately for the turtles of Cayo Largo, Gonzalo Nodarse and Felix Moncada have something else in mind.
FELIX MONCADA: Sea turtles are a charismatic species. You get the feeling that the more we know about them, the less we understand them. Like, how they are born on one beach, and later they come back to the same beach to reproduce. How do they do it?
NARRATOR: Felix and Gonzalo are Cuba’s top sea turtle biologists, and they’re monitoring Cayo Largo’s beaches during nesting season. The steady advance of pollution and development is pushing turtles to build their nests in increasingly dangerous areas.
GONZALO NODARSE: You can see that the waves come all the way up to here. This is a nest that is potentially threatened. If the sea reaches the nest, the saltwater will penetrate the embryos and they’ll die.
NARRATOR: Gonzalo and Felix attempt to rescue the eggs from their hazardous site and call in their local colleague, Leonardo Valido, who runs a small hatchery on the island.
NARRATOR: The eggs are transported in the same orientation they’re found in the nest. The smell of the sand from their nesting beach will permeate the soft eggs, imprinting on the turtles. In the future, the females that survive to adulthood will follow the scent to this exact spot.
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