Cabo San Lucas Turtle Release
My husband and I are all about once-in-a-lifetime experiences while on vacation. With both our son and Nagymama (his Grandma) on the trip with us, we wanted epic. When I saw the Baby Sea Turtle Release Activity through Cabo Adventures while I was planning our vacation, I knew I’d found epic.
We met our tour guide at the Reserva Ecologica Municpal Estero in San Jose del Cabo. From what I understand, there is a free shuttle to pick you up, but we had a rental car so we drove ourselves. We walked on the sand and then saw a cage-like structure with people working in the sand with buckets. The closer we got, we realized many of those buckets contained turtles – TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY TURTLE HATCHLINGS! Theses turtles had just come out of their eggs about two hours earlier. As we were on the tour, we were able to go in to the cage and take a look at them close up.
We found out the turtles we would be releasing are Olive Ridley sea turtles. From the end of August through the beginning of December, the female sea turtles return to the beaches where they hatched and come on shore by the thousands to nest, laying over 100 eggs sometimes as many as three times! It takes 52-58 days of incubation. What the conservationist do is go out on the beaches and remove the eggs from the original nests and place them in a man-made hatchery to save them from predators. When the eggs hatch, the hatchlings are released on a big sand hill and allowed to run across he sand into the ocean. Due to the efforts of these conservationists the Olive Ridley Sea Turtles are still endangered, but are making a significant comeback. More so than any other endangered turtle species.
Our guide grabbed a big bucket, we walked across the beach at sunset and bid our little turtle friends good-bye as we released them. We named some of them for family members who are no longer with us and then when everyone had released as many as they wanted, dumped over the remaining hatchlings, and waited for the ocean to take them all away.
I don’t think I will ever forget the faces of my son, my Mom and my husband releasing those little turtles. Priceless memories!!
Just a few things to keep in mind:
- You will be doing a fair amount of walking on sand. You might want to bring a back-pack to pack any/shoes or purses you want to bring with you.
- Don’t forget a pack of sani-wipes. I managed to step into a nice big pile of poo on the way out. Since I didn’t have any other shoes and we were getting dinner, sani-wipes to the rescue.
- This adventure can take a long time depending on who is in your group. If you have anyone older with you, keep this in mind, and bring a blanket or towel with you for them to sit on the beach and especially for the way back over the sand as it can be really tiring walking over the sand in the dark.
- Almost all of the tour groups charge the same price since there is a donation made to keep the sea-turtle conservation efforts moving forward.
