Cozumel and Sea Turtle Rescue 2017
Tommy talking to Tony the Turtle before he got released
Cozumel | 2017
Sea Turtle Recovery Detail
Part of an August cruise run out of New Orleans. Carnival ship. Western Caribbean. Cozumel was one of the stops.
We stepped off the ship with two plans on paper:
Save a Sea Turtle program
a private glass-bottom boat and snorkel run over the reefs
Only one of those mattered in the end.
Turtle Detail
The turtle recovery operation was run off a bus—about twenty-five people total. We were split into smaller teams and each group was assigned a nest.
No speeches. No theatrics. Just work.
We dug. Carefully. By hand. Looking for hatchlings that didn’t make it out on their own during the night. Some turtles get turned around. Some get trapped. Some just don’t have the strength to finish the job.
When we found them, we placed them in a basket, carried them down near the waterline, and released them. No tossing. No staging. Just letting instinct take over.
We also excavated the nest itself—counted hatched eggs, unhatched eggs, and even remains from previous seasons. Data matters. Numbers matter. That’s how these programs survive.
That day, the group recovered forty baby turtles. Our family accounted for nine of them.
Hard to explain what that feels like. You don’t save them. You just remove the obstacle and let nature finish the job.
Watching those little dudes scramble downhill toward the surf—no hesitation, no doubt—puts things in perspective. If they make it past the first few minutes, they’ll spend the next century and a half doing turtle things in the open ocean.
That alone justified the entire cruise.
The rest of the tour included a “Mayan Village.” It felt staged, hollow, and built strictly for tourist optics. We survived it.
Snorkel Plans (or Lack Thereof)
After getting dropped back near the port, we grabbed a cab to El Cid Beach Resort where our snorkel boat was supposed to meet us.
It didn’t.
Somewhere between confirmation emails and reality, the meeting point got lost. Happens.
Instead of getting angry, we met Carla Blanco from Snorkel Adventure. She had a boat already out and tried to make it work for us anyway. Got us reservations. Sent us inside the resort to eat—technically off-limits, unofficially approved.
Good people matter more than good schedules.
The boat came back too late for us to safely make the run and still catch our ship. No drama. No scrambling. We called it.
We spent the remaining time jumping off the pier, about 15 foot drop, killing time, talking story with Carla and her daughter. Clear water. No regrets.
If you ever snorkel in Cozumel, talk to Carla. Solid operator. No bullshit.
Takeaway
Trips rarely go exactly as planned. That’s not a failure—that’s the filter.
The snorkel didn’t happen. Didn’t matter.
We showed up. We worked. We helped nine tiny creatures make it to the water instead of dying six feet short.
Everything else was noise.
Run lil dudes, run!
Setting the turtle in the basket before the big release
