Turtle watch: Saving a species on the coasts of the Riviera Maya.

The sky is lit up like a jewel, a night breeze blows off the ocean, and the pounding surf is hypnotic.

Sounds like the setting for a night of romance, doesn't it? Romance aside, it's the summer sky along the Riviera Maya, which plays its magic to hundreds of sea turtles making their way ashore to do what nature intended them to do--lay eggs to propagate the species. Now there's a better chance of survival for the young, but it wasn't always so.

There was no ban on turtle hunting in Mexico until 1990. Before then, the animals were slaughtered mercilessly, the meat sold on the open market. From time immemorial, poachers hunted the eggs to sell as aphrodisiacs. Now the sea turtle population, which was in danger of extinction, is slowly being restored.

SAVE THE TURTLES

The research center at Xcaret is one of many groups in Mexico that is actively involved in saving the species. It sponsors a turtle camp from May to September, which coincides with their nesting and hatching season. As part of the program, the team monitors 57 miles of coast at six different nesting areas, which stretch south from Xcaret to the end point of the Sian Ka'an Biosphere. The Loggerheads and the Greens are two species that favor the Quintana Roo coast, building their nests every two years.

For some unexplained reason, turtles lay more eggs in even numbered than odd numbered years, so 2000 was a banner year. Xcaret kept watch over 250,000 eggs last year. The female turtle lays 100 to 110 eggs at a time and up to five times in a season. Left on their own in the wild, only two or three turtles from a nest will survive after hatching. Many more survive at Xcaret, which houses the baby turtles for 12 months. Then they are tagged and released.

"Their chances of survival at sea are better after they are a year old," says Liliana Rodriguez; Xcaret's director of public relations.

PROTECTING THE NEST

It takes 20 years for a turtle to reach reproductive readiness and it nests many times over before it reaches the end of its life around age 100. The heat around the egg determines the sex of the turtle during the nesting period. The hottest eggs produce female turtles.

One of the six nesting areas being monitored by Xcaret is Akumal. The bay within this area is supervised by Roberto Rivas, general manager of the Hacienda de la Tortuga hotel, who does his work as a volunteer without pay. Roberto spends four months of the year patrolling the beach until 2 a.m. looking for nesting turtles. Guests of the hotels and condominiums lining the beach are asked to keep lights off at night because if a beach area is artificially lit, it makes the turtles nervous.

Female turtles, by some extraordinary instinct, come back to the exact same spot every nesting season. Once she has her nest located, she digs a deep hole and starts depositing the eggs. This usually takes an hour. Then she covers the nest by drawing sand back into the hole with her flippers. Exhausted after the birthing ordeal, she then heads slowly back to sea.

FOR THE RECORD

Once the turtle is midway into laying her eggs, Roberto approaches, measures her across the back for size and searches for the metal disk with which she has been tagged. All data, including the date of the nest, is recorded into a notebook.

The nest is marked off by tall sticks at night. During the day, a small fence is placed around it to prevent predators from getting at the eggs. Each morning, Roberto walks the beach to check for the nests that he may have missed. Turtle tracks left over from the night before lead to the telltale nest, which is then marked off and recorded. Roberto has also been licensed by the Mexican government to report poachers to the proper authorities.

The Hacienda de la Tortuga can be reached at 987-30884 or by e-mail at [e-mail]. The website is www.haciendalatortuga.com.