Group Fits Leatherback
With Satellite Transmitters
GANDOCA, Limón – Scientists working with the Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC) yesterday harnessed a leatherback turtle here with a satellite transmitter they hope will provide them with valuable data regarding the animal’s migratory behavior.
(Click for more)

Air Madrid Confirms
Direct Flight to Costa Rica
The company Air Madrid on Friday confirmed it will inaugurate regular, non-stop service between San José and Madrid, Spain, starting Thursday.
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Unions to March against
Trade Agreement Today
Teachers, students and public employees from nearly 300 different social organizations and unions are expected to take to the streets of San José today in what organizers say will be one of the largest protests against the Central America Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA) this year.
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U.S. Embassy Closed
The U.S. Embassy will be closed today in observance of Memorial Day.

Memorial Day Service
The American Legion Post 16 announces its memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. instead of 1 p.m., because of weather concerns, at the same location, Health Visions Clinic in San Joaquín de Flores, Heredia. The service will remember those who have fallen in the Iraq conflict. Info: Howard Singer, 266-0089.

Concert by the National Symphony Orchestra
The acclaimed orchestra is performing at 7 p.m. at the Coronado Church, northeast of San José. Info: 236-5395.

Group Fits Leatherback
With Satellite Transmitters
By Steven J. Barry
sbarry@ticotimes.net

GANDOCA, Limón – Scientists working with the Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC) yesterday harnessed a leatherback turtle here with a satellite transmitter they hope will provide them with valuable data regarding the animal’s migratory behavior.

It was the third such transmitter, which cost about $2,500 each, the conservation group attached last week. Scientists fitted two turtles in Tortuguero, on the northern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, with the devices Wednesday and Thursday.

Sebastian Troeng, scientific director of the CCC, said the data the team hopes to obtain from the transmitter will help researchers coordinate international conservation efforts by showing them where the turtles are around the globe at different times of the year.

Leatherbacks, the world’s largest reptiles, are indeed international animals. Troeng said one turtle tracked by the CCC in 2003 traveled some 5,000 miles in seven months, and researchers occasionally encounter the turtles in Spain, West Africa and Canada.

The leatherback population on the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica has remained stable in recent years, Troeng said, but the turtles have suffered drastic losses in the Eastern Pacific. Leatherbacks there are often inadvertently caught by long-line fishing ships looking for swordfish or sharks.

CCC scientists hope to determine whether the leatherbacks’ migratory patterns coincide with periods of heavy fishing elsewhere in the world, thus increasing the threat to this already-endangered animal.

“Our efforts here may be compromised by what’s happening in places very far away from here,” Troeng said. “That’s why the transmitter is important – to find out where they are, when.”

The transmitter, attached by means of a harness that will degrade and fall off the animal within two years, will emit a signal each time the turtles – the world’s third deepest-diving air-breathing animal – surface for air.

Within about a week, said Dan Evans, CCC’s Educational Coordinator, the turtle’s movement will be posted on the Internet at www.cccturtle.org.

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