7th MARINE TURTLE FESTIVAL COMING SOON
Every year in October, since 2002, we celebrate the closing of the Marine Turtle season in this region with a Festival. As you may already know there are 7 Marine turtle species in the world and 6 of them arrive to the coasts of Mexico. Furthermore, 3 of the 6 species hatch in the Quintana Roo seashore. Hence, it has become a big honor and responsibility for the inhabitants of the State to contribute to its conservation and research.
Beside the programs that already exist for the Marine turtle conservation, seven years ago a couple of people and Institutions had the initiative to organize a Marine Turtle Festival in Tulum as a way to increase environmental awareness to protect them. This initiative has been growing year after year and more and more organizations are summing up to it.
The success of the Festival lays on its participants, donors and the Organizing Committee in which the needs and actions for the Festival are discussed. It is conformed by representatives of different governmental and non governmental organizations such as Amigos de Sian Ka’an, Casa de la Cultura from Tulum (Culture Centre), Centro Ecológico de Akumal (CEA), Centro Ecológico de Sian Ka’an (CESIAK), Chanel 30, CONANP, Flora Fauna y Cultura de Mexico (FFyCM), GVI, Ecobahía, Municipality of Tulum, Save the children through Ludoteca of Tulum, University of Quintana Roo (UQROO) and Xel-ha.As you can imagine a Festival like this takes a lot of time and organization behind, hence the members of this committee have been gathering together every month since March in order to assure everything will be ready for the Festival in October!
This year the Festival will be held from the 16th to the 18th of October in three different places. Friday 16th October in Casa de la Cultura Tulum (Culture Centre in Tulum), Saturday 17th in Tulum beach in the morning and Xcacel (Marine Turtle Sanctuary) in the afternoon. For the first time in its history and due to its big success one more day has been added in order to do some more environmental activities and baby turtle releases in Akumal.We will keep you posted through this blog on how the arrangements and previous activities to this festival go!!
Also all of you future volunteers coming in October will have the opportunity to participate in this unique Festival and have the opportunity to contribute to its conservation.
Already looking forward to it!!!
1 comments:
We´ll be ready to celebrate with some Caguamas (mexican joke as Caguama is how local people call the Loggerhead turtles, and is the name of the 1-liter beer bottles as well);)!!!
By the way, there are SEVEN species of MT and all seven are listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES); Six of the seven species are listed as Endangered or Critically Endangered. Here, the seven: Olive Ridley, Kemp´s Ridley, Flatback, Green, Loggerhead, Hawksbill and Leatherback.
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