Pacuare Reserve has been working for the last 25 years in protecting the Leatherback sea turtle and collecting data about nesting trends, population status, and nests survival. The leatherback turtle rookery of Caribbean Central America (with Pacuare being an important nesting beach), represents one of the four largest remaining rookeries worldwide, together with French Guiana/Suriname, Gabon and Trinidad (Troëng et al., 2004).

 

The 6 km (3.72 miles) of coastline are walked every night during the nesting and hatching season (from the end of February to September) by the research assistants, volunteers and groups of students that visit the Reserve. Every night, three different shifts cover the beach from 8 pm to  4 am, to minimize the loss of sea turtles. There's also a morning count to check for new activities or hatchlings emerging. Groups begin their censuses from each of the two stations- North and South.

 

The research assistants have a training period at the beginning of the season with theoretical and practical sessions to ensure the standardization of the data collection. There are some sessions during the season to check the compliance of the protocols and to correct differences between the two stations. The guards are in charge of the beach protection by guarding the two ends of the beach and deterring people not related to the project from accessing the beach.