[PHOTO] "Selfie-crazed tourists prevent sea turtles from nesting in Costa Rica"

[rfmcdonald]

Photographers like this give us all a bad name. From the CBC's Lauren O'Neill:

If you're thinking of taking a few days to do some ecotourism in Costa Rica during your next vacation down south, the country's government has a message for you: Please be respectful.

Officials from the Costa Rican Ministry of Environment and Energy have been speaking out in recent weeks against snap-happy visitors who they say are interfering with the nesting habits of a vulnerable sea turtle species by attempting to take selfies with them.

According to San José-based newspaper The Tico Times, hundreds of tourists swarmed a seven-kilometre stretch of Ostional Beach on Costa Rica's Pacific coast earlier this month to watch a large group of olive ridley sea turtles come ashore and lay their eggs.

[. . .]

Since the population of olive ridleys continues to decline (there are 50 per cent fewer of these turtles than there were in the 1960s,) conservation officials take any sort of interference with their ability to reproduce seriously.

Mobs of tourists who stomp around, try to take selfies with, and even pick up nesting olive ridley sea turtles are one such type of interference.

The Environment Ministry's workers union reported in a Sept. 8 post on its Facebook page that "hundreds of tourists stood in the way of the turtles" during one of their most recent mass nesting sessions, prompting many turtles to leave the beach without laying any eggs.