Jag Walk

Phase 103 saw everyone who wanted to walk the 15 miles North to Tortuguero from base. This lead us to finding 87 dead turtles for phase. With the increased number of carcasses that are found at this time of the year, the length of survey also increases. After an early 4.30am start, no team finished earlier than 2pm and I don’t think that Marcus, Sarah or Rachel will forget finishing their epic walk at just gone 4pm!

In recent times we have reported on the movement of jaguars closer to base. This ties in with the area of highest jaguar activity on the beach, being between mile 11.5 and 15.5. Despite the dry sand conditions seen through much of the 10 weeks we did manage to record jag tracks on every jag walk. And this same sand conditions probably contributed to making the jag walks this phase some of the toughest of the year.
As we having been finding year on year, the number of dead turtles that we are finding keeps increasing. At this point last year we had recorded 79 jaguar predated turtles, showing that this year has seen a 10% increase. With Green season still in full flow we expect to see many more carcasses for the rest of the season, and potentially another new high set for the year.

Jag Walk