The fact that olive ridley marine turtles are seriously threatened is really difficult to believe because, after all, they have been on earth more than 100,000,000 years.

To put this into a bit of perspective, imagine the mighty T Rex. It roamed North America nearly seventy million years ago and, as surely as night follows day, it feasted on olive ridleys when they came ashore to lay their eggs.

These ancient reptiles of the 7 seas have flourished for unimaginable eons, despite being eaten by just about everything under the sun for tens of millions of generations. Incredibly, probably 30,000,000 or more generations of marine turtles were preyed upon by reptiles and other dinosaurs and fish before the first Tyrannosaurus Rex walked the earth and, since then, another seventy million generations have suffered the same fate. Still, they flourished.

They even survived the greatest extinction the earth has suffered. Indeed though all of the mighty dinosaurs perished—they lived and flourished.

These ancient mariners spread across the face of the planet, swimming all of the tropical and temperate seas. They thrived in incredible numbers from the east coast of the Americas to the Arabian Sea and from the Pacific coasts of the New World to India. There were tens upon tens of millions, maybe more.

When Americans began to watch “I Love Lucy” the seas were still full of these turtles. The Pacific coast of Mexico alone hosted ten million olive ridley nests when the first episode of that TV show aired, each with about 100 eggs per clutch. Maybe a billion eggs were laid along just one coast of Mexico in just one year–1951—and these animals were found virtually every place that the oceans were temperate or tropical. The number of eggs was limitless.

There were so many eggs that were easy pickings and so much profit to be made that, during the incredible arribadas, or nestings, massive pack trains of horses and mules were brought to the beaches. These animals carried out hundreds of millions of eggs each nesting season, year-after-year. And, so it was that within about 20 years or so, there was only one nest in one year on a beach where there had been several hundred thousand when we first laughed at Lucy and Desi. Unfortunately, this was being repeated across the world.

At the same time, many countries opened olive ridley fisheries.

The result? From limitless to endangered in a few short years. One generation of men nearly accomplished what seemed impossible: nearly destroying in the blink of an eye what had taken a hundred million generations to create.

However, as more and more countries finally realized the extent of depredation, some have begun taking steps to conserve and protect sea turtles. Little Costa Rica has created important wildlife reserves and worked with dedicated conservation groups and the local people of Costa Rica to rebuild stocks.

Today, Ostional Beach, on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, almost certainly has world’s largest arribadas of olive ridley sea turtles. Every month, often when the moon is in its last quarter, female turtles gather close to shore for several days and suddenly come to the beach in large groups, over the course of several days and nights. The greatest arribadas are often in October, November, and December and the biggest arribada in recent years was half a million females coming ashore in 1995. If you are interested in Costa Rica ecotourism, this is a must-see.

Costa Rica finally recognized that these ancient creatures are worth more than the sum total of their meat and eggs. But what about Mexico? Remember that pathetic single nest on the beach that had once been overflowing with olive ridley sea turtles? Well, the government finally decided to protect it. By 1988, it had recovered to 50,000 nests. Twelve years later there were a million nests.

From a billion eggs to a single nest and then from a single nest to a million turtles. Unbelievable. It is clear that if we just give these animals a chance, they can be on earth another 100,000,000 years.

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The teenage olive ridley sea turtle was just 15 years old as she waited 500 yards offshore in the warm, tropical eastern Pacific ocean off Ostional Beach in a small land that, more than 500 years earlier, Christopher Columbus had discovered and named “Costa Rica”, the “rich coast.”

The nearly daily afternoon tropical rains of November had slipped away as the marine turtle waited in anticipation. The moon was in its final quarter and, though she did not know why, it was having an effect on her.

As it has done for uncountable eons, the moon was gracing the earth with its timeless phases. Though she could not know it, it was drawing this olive ridley turtle ashore. She was not alone. At first, a few yards away, another Pacific sea turtle joined her, then a third, followed by a dozen, then hundreds, thousands, now tens of thousands of marine sea turtles. For more than 100,000,000 years it had been thus: vast migrations of ancient creatures, culminating when the moon was in this phase.

Life is always magical. Just a few months earlier, this turtle was foraging in the middle of the Pacific Ocean more than 2,500 miles away. And the tens of thousands now alongside her were scattered across several million square miles of ocean.

Although there was plenty of food far out in the Pacific, something had begun to stir within her. Hundreds of thousands of marine turtles felt the same timeless need to return to Costa Rica. They, and she, were all going back to where they had hatched.

Now, months later, she waited in the soft moonlight just a few hundred meters from her destination. She was ready. Over the thousands of miles she had traversed, she had encountered several different male olive ridley sea turtles in the clear tropical waters and bred with them in the deep ocean. Like her, they too were being affected by something unseen, a force nearly as old as life itself. It was something so compelling that her species had been going back to the same Costa Rica beach since the days of dinosaurs.

In the tropical night this olive ridley sea turtle was waiting. She had somehow returned to the very beach where she had hatched in 1995. We do not know how a Pacific marine turtle finds the exact beach where she started life. There are only a handful of nesting beaches on earth and they are not very big. In fact Ostional Beach is only a few hundred meters long. Now part of Costa Rica’s Ostional National Wildlife Refuge, it is almost certainly the most important olive ridley marine turtle nesting site on earth. Incredibly, in 1995, the year this turtle hatched, some half a million female olive pacific sea turtles had come ashore to nest here in huge waves. These massive invasions are called “arribadas.”

For fifteen years, the mother of this hundred pound marine turtle joined massive Costa Rica arribadas annually and she would have done so again except that she drowned in an illegal shrimping net just a few weeks before. Thousands more were killed by long line commercial fishermen. Even more died needlessly by swallowing plastic bags carelessly discarded. So many have been killed, the race is endangered.

Of course, the hundreds of thousands of olive ridleys just offshore know none of this. In the tropical pale moonlight, we can see them even though they are still half a mile away. There are now so many gathered that it almost seems one could walk on their backs for at least a mile and never get a wet foot. We can only gaze in wonder and awe as they gather silently. These ancient beings will never know that they were here long before there was a dinosaur walking the earth. They cannot appreciate our capacity for destruction or efforts at preservation. They only know that this little stretch of beach is where they’ve always come.

Then, though no one knows why, it happens. As quietly as they first appeared, as silently as they gathered, their patience has been rewarded and they begin to come ashore. A single olive ridley turtle followed by a second. Then there are hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands—even more than that—each intent on one task: bringing new life. All night they come. And all day, day after day. It is a wonder of magnificent Costa Rica and as timeless as the phases of the moon. It is the spectacular display of life called Arribada.

A Costa Rica scientific fin and satellite tagging project recently got underway at Cocos Island studying its green sea turtle and hawksbill visitors.

Conservation organizations and marine researchers spent about 30 hours going to the island in their pursuit for more knowledge about these ancient marine animals.

They are engaged in a kind of scientific working Costa Rica vacation that they anticipate will contribute to preserving these marvelous reptilian mariners now endangered in much of their range.

Cocos Island was described by the famous seaman, Jacque Cousteau, as the most beautiful island he had ever encountered. The small island, just nine square miles in area, lies some 340 miles off the Pacific shoreline of Costa Rica, almost halfway to the Galapagos Islands.

It was not the tropical sunsets and beaches that captured the imagination of Captain Cousteau. Its beauty is just off its shores, under water, in a place that Costa Ricans have voted as one of the Seven Wonders of Costa Rica. It is there that one finds priceless treasure: vast schools of fish, porpoises, whales and turtles.

Since the days of dinosaurs sea turtles have swum the Seven Seas of the world.

The mighty Tyrannosaurus fed on them more than 200 million years ago as they paddled ashore to lay their eggs on ancient beaches.

These ancient beings roam all the planet’s seas except the frozen Antarctic and Arctic.

Sadly , no more. Today, our indiscriminate development of beaches and plundering of their nests have put them at risk. Millions have been in South America to make expensive shoes for Europeans.

Jacque Yves Cousteau presciently remarked that: “If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect.” A being visiting from another galaxy might conclude that such a result would be just.

But, conservation organizations have not given up and are working to restore at least some turtle populations. Scientists are now tagging pelagic turtles like the green sea turtle in far-away places like Cocos Island. Some turtles are fitted with flipper tags while others bear satellite transmitters to help track their movements and it has been discovered that some species roam across thousands and thousands of miles of oceans, from tropical waters to the deep waters off Canada.

We cannot undo the past but the men and women who tag sea turtles know that we do not have to be doomed to repeat it.

The writer, Victor Krumm, lives in tropical Costa Rica. Follow his fun site Costa Rica Vacations and for info about great beaches check out Costa Rica Beaches